


The Empress of Dunwall and the Dangerously Irrelevant Variables

by Mertiya



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But I take some liberties, Canon-Typical Violence, Chaos Theory, Dishonored 2, Father-Daughter Relationship, Jessamine may be dead but it's not slowing her down, Many cups of tea are had, Mentor/Protégé, Mostly Canon Compliant, Multi, Science themes, Somewhat non-linear narrative, things get complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-11-15 00:04:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 58,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11219043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: Whether Emily or Corvo is turned to stone is not the only turning point in the road to Delilah's coup.  There are an infinity of different timelines; this is the one where Piero Joplin does not die in 1847 and Anton Sokolov does not retire.  In this timeline, Piero drinks a lot of tea in the Void with Jessamine and worries about design considerations, and Anton is a grouchy old bastard who doesn't let anything slow him down from helping Emily.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Natural Philosopher and the Nonlinear Terms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/870534) by [Rastaban](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rastaban/pseuds/Rastaban). 



> Many thanks to Rastaban, for helping me flesh out backstory, characterization, and general themes, as well as inspiring me to write this thing with her own epic fic. Thanks also to Juri, balverine, paperclipminizer, and bauglir3, for listening to excerpts and cheering me on, and thanks to my long-suffering husband for letting me bully him into beta-ing.
> 
> It is worth noting that the timeline for this fic is a mishmash of the official timeline, Rastaban's timeline for The Natural Philosopher and the Nonlinear Terms, and my own personal headcanons. At some point if people are interested I may post the timeline itself, which I did work out with a fair degree of detail.

_Dangerously irrelevant variable, quantum field theory/renormalization group theory—a variable which does not affect the resultant physics of a theory but strongly affects the calculation thereof._

 

            “The Royal Physician to see you, Your Majesty.”

            Emily Kaldwin looked up in irritation from the letter she was composing, keeping her face as blank as she could. She had been looking forward to an uninterrupted hour with only the words of Wyman for company. Trust Anton to find the one moment of solitude she had blocked out in her entire day and intrude upon it. “Show him in,” she told Alexi, who made a sympathetic face at her and nodded.

            Anton, as always, entered in a swirl of energy; to Emily’s surprise, Piero Joplin trailed in his wake, looking uncomfortably out of place as he always did whenever he was summoned to the Tower. He hovered near the back of the room as Anton stalked across it and slammed a newspaper article down on Emily’s desk. A stab of pain went through her left temple in time with the noise. “Ichabod Boyle,” Anton snarled. “What has been done?”

            Oh, he was in a mood. “The Watch is investigating,” Emily responded coolly. “And this is hardly your concern, _Royal Physician_.”

            Anton glared at her, and she glared back. “The Watch couldn’t find its own ass if it was cut off and handed to it on a platter,” he snapped. “What does Corvo think?”

            Emily breathed in, counted to ten, breathed out, then did it again. The mix of emotions that the recent spate of murders—dubbed by the newspapers the ‘Crown-killer murders’—inspired in her was confusing enough without dealing with Anton Sokolov on the warpath. Over the past year, someone had begun targeting her political enemies, and it had gotten to the point where she was almost afraid to open the morning’s paper. She hated the way her heart rose whenever she saw that someone she particularly disliked was not going to be bothering her anymore, and it made her feel sick to read the details, but she forced herself to do so despite that. She did not like the way some of her own servants had begun to look at her—as if they believed that she was responsible. Or that Corvo was. And Emily was forced to admit she could understand such a suspicion. The Crown-killer murders were uncomfortably reminiscent of the spate of quiet removals fifteen years ago during the Interregnum—despite the fact that Corvo had done his best to keep casualties to a minimum, Emily knew that the faceless figure in the death’s head mask was still a source of fear to some, a horror story told to frighten disobedient children.

            So this morning, when she had woken and come down to breakfast, to see the papers screaming _Anti-rationer Boyle Latest Victim of the Crown-killer!_ would have been an unpleasant-enough awakening if she hadn’t already been feeling tired and logy. She had spent a large portion of the previous night crawling over half of the rooftops in Dunwall, after coming back from an extremely unpleasant council meeting during which the exceedingly unpleasant Ichabod insinuated a number of very nasty things about her and Corvo.

            “Corvo doesn’t know yet, either,” she was forced to admit uncomfortably.

            “And you wonder why I am making this my business? Someone with half a brain needs to start taking this seriously!”

            “I _am_!” Emily cried, her calm façade cracking.

            “Your Majesty,” Anton said silkily, and her heart sank further at the sudden softening of his voice, “are you aware that three of your chambermaids would swear you were not in your bed until past two a.m.?”

            “Before or after you fucked them?” Emily shot back, before wincing. Anton did not deserve such an accusation, she knew that, and had she not been so tired and frustrated, she would never have said such a thing, particularly not in front of Master Joplin.

            “For _fuck’s_ sake, Emily! Can you not see what this means?”

            “All I see is that you are accusing me of some sort of complicity—”

            “I’m not accusing you of jack shit, as you’d know if you bothered using your brain once in a while! I’m saying that all your gallivanting around after hours is giving your opponents exactly the ammunition _they_ need to accuse you of slicing Ichabod Boyle’s head off and stringing him up to a lamp-post yourself!”

            There was a small, cold knot in the center of Emily’s stomach, a small voice in the back of her mind that had been whispering the exact same thing since she had woken up in the morning. And, at the same time, the tearing, desperate knowledge that if she gave up her night-time outings, she would be well and truly trapped. “Master Sokolov—”

            “Stop going out at night, and let Piero and me do _something_. Officially.”

            Emily let out a breath. “I can’t do that—”

            Anton slammed his fist down, then ran his hands through his hair in a somewhat dramatic manner. “You cannot go on like this.”

            “At least they’re targeting our enemies!” she burst out before she could stop herself, and then she looked sideways so she didn’t have to see the look on Anton’s face. “I _can’t_ ,” she tried desperately. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be caged—day in, day out—”

            An incredulous snort. “If that’s really what you think, Your Majesty, I can’t change your mind. I can, however, resign.”

            “You—what?”

            He slapped a piece of paper down in front of her. “My resignation as Royal Physician, my resignation from the Academy, and Joplin’s as well. We’re going to Serkonos.”

            Emily stared down. “You can’t,” she said blankly, all of her anger draining away in an instant. She was ten years old again, curled up on a ratty blanket in her tower room at the Hound Pits, and Callista was telling her that her mother was dead. “You can’t, Anton, I didn’t—” But she couldn’t quite say it. She couldn’t say that she hadn’t meant it when she wasn’t even sure she hadn’t.

            “I’m going to pack,” Anton said gruffly. Emily tried once again to find the right words for this situation, but her mind was suddenly empty, reeling, tongue stilled. She found herself staring silently down at the words on the paper in front of her. They blurred in front of her eyes.

            “Wait—” she tried finally, as if she were still that little girl whispering to Corvo’s retreating back as he leapt from the window, but her words were just as ineffective now as they had been back then. She didn’t think Anton even heard her as he stalked out of the room, somehow managing to swirl his short coat behind him.

            “Fuck,” Emily muttered. “Fine, then,” she said. “Go. I’ll be fine. I don’t need you.” She was lying. It was almost as if Corvo himself had told her to get along without him.

            A dry cough. Emily’s attention snapped to the corner of the room, where Master Joplin was still standing, his hands fiddling awkwardly with the upturned cuffs of his stained, oversized jacket. Swallowing the tears that were threatening to erupt, Emily turned to him.

            “What do you want—” She started. No, that wasn’t fair. “What can I do for you, Pi—Master Joplin? I assume you don’t want to withdraw this resignation.”

            His eyes were fixed on a point somewhere in the center of the floor. “A-A-Anton is n-n-n-not abandoning y-y-you, Your M-Majesty.”

            “I don’t understand!” Emily burst out. “He knows how hard this is for me! He knows I wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone!”

            “H-He is n-not—” Piero spread his hands miserably. His face was still pointed towards the ground. “He was already p-perturbed, the murder of Ichabod Boyle—he is not d-doing this to p-punish you.”

            “Well, he _is_ punishing me,” Emily snapped miserably, regretting the statement the instant the words left her lips.

            “The situation is not—optimal,” Piero got out.

            “Then stay,” Emily pleaded. “Tell him not to leave.”

            Piero shook his head and shrugged, opening his mouth as if he were still searching for words, but no words rose to his lips. Emily sagged in her seat, and he looked back and forth from her to the door. Finally, murmuring something inaudible, he made an escape. Emily rested her head in her hands and tried not to cry.

~

            For weeks, Emily regretted not responding more maturely to Anton’s accusations and pleas. When Delilah appeared at her court, stripped her of her throne, and turned her father to stone, she regretted it more. _Outsider’s piss,_ she thought, grimly and miserably sneaking out of the room she had been imprisoned in, head aching from the imprint of Captain Ramsey’s boot, _now I’m well and truly fucked_.

            When Alexi died on the floor, choking out that there was a boat captain down at the docks who had been looking for the Royal Protector, Emily did not have time to spare to mourn. She was barely able to make it out of the room without being apprehended, and even if she wanted nothing more than to curl up in a quiet corner and cry, she knew she had to keep moving.

            She crept through the palace like an outcast shadow, slipping from place to place with no thought other than to evade capture; eventually, with a faint sense of satisfaction, she locked Ramsey into the saferoom and finally slipped out and down towards the docks. The ramshackle boat waiting for her made heart leap suddenly, without warning.

            It was almost five years ago now that Anton and Piero had disappeared for six months on a trip that was supposed to take one and reappeared after the entire court had nearly given them up for dead in a boat named the _Dreadful Wale_ , captained by a woman who called herself Meagan Foster whom Emily had met, very briefly, only for the span of the five minutes it had taken the two of them and Piero to pry an extremely drunk Royal Physician out of his bunk in the ship and transport him into his quarters at Kaldwin’s Bridge.

            With a sudden, absurd feeling of tears pricking at the backs of her eyes, Emily dove into the clear water of Dunwall harbor and swam over to the _Wale_ , clambering up its sloping sides without much difficulty. Although it was a warm day, she was shivering as she pulled herself over the railing at the top and looked around, half-expecting an exasperated Anton to storm over and demand an explanation.

            Instead, it was very quiet. The deck rocked slightly in the pull of the ebbing tide, and the sunlight glinted off the dark, water-soaked wood beneath her feet. The day was bright and clear, and for an instant, staring at the high vault of blue sky above her, Emily thought she had stepped out of the world entirely. Then the hatch clicked open and Meagan Foster climbed wearily up onto the deck. Her good eye was bloodshot, and she was rubbing the stump of her right arm absentmindedly. She paused when she saw Emily standing there and beckoned. “Your Grace, get down below,” she said quickly. “It would not do for an overcautious guard to spot you here.”

            Emily obeyed instinctively, moving from the fresh, open air to the close, dank corridor leading downwards with barely even a pang. “Anton?” she demanded. “Is he here?”

            Meagan shut the hatch, her eye alighting at a point somewhere near Emily’s shoulder. Quietly, she shook her head, and Emily felt the rising hope in her chest shrink back down into something cold and heavy. Of course he was not here. He had been angry with her—not without reason—and he had left, and he had not returned. Emily turned to the side to hide the sudden pinch in her expression.

            “Anton has been taken by the Crown-killer,” Meagan said, and Emily’s legs stopped working. She stumbled on the steps, crashing hard into the wall. Only a rapid grab for the railing stopped her from falling, because for some reason, she simply couldn’t feel her knees anymore. For a long moment, she bent over, holding on as hard as she could, the pain and tension in her arms taking over for the strange non-feeling in her legs. Then her knees firmed up, and she managed to stand again, managed to remember to form words.

            “What happened?”

            “We had been investigating the murders,” Meagan said, with a sigh. “I think we were close to discovering the culprit—apparently too close. I was below, and I heard shouting—I made it onto the deck in time to see the Crown-killer take off with Anton slung across a shoulder.”

            “What about Piero?” Emily asked. “Is he—” He must be worried out of his mind. Would he even be willing to speak with her?

            “Took a knife to the throat.”

            The deck seemed to pitch to the side this time. Emily leaned backwards into the wall and shut her eyes. “Do you have any idea how we can retrieve Anton?” she asked. Surely that was the first priority.

            “You need to sit down,” Meagan said. “Come on.” A solid hand was inserted under Emily’s elbow, and she managed to pull herself together enough to allow Meagan to lead her down the rest of the flight of steps and into a tiny galley kitchen with a long, low table in the center. Meagan pressed her into one of the chairs. “Breathe,” she told Emily, who obeyed without conscious thought. “You’re all right,” Meagan said awkwardly.

            _I’m not_ , Emily wanted to argue, but she didn’t have that luxury. Piero and Alexi dead, Anton missing, Corvo sealed in stone. It looked as if there was no one available to rescue her this time. “Yes,” she said curtly. “Fine. Now tell me everything you know about the Crown-killer.”

~

            Anton Sokolov dreamed. He dreamed of Jess’s long legs, her pale thighs, her voice moaning throaty with pleasure. He dreamed of her voice, clearer, a little worried, _I have an issue._

            _What kind of issue?_

The quirk on her lips as she responded, despite the soft worry, _A literal one, Tosha,_ gesturing to her abdomen.

            He dreamed of midnight fumblings in the room beside the laboratory, softer sighs, paler thighs; Petja’s shuddering shoulders. He dreamed of the quiet moments and the unquiet ones, of the heat of the Pandyssian sun melting into the warmth of Piero’s arms, of the shattering impact of the tallboys assaulting the shutters as the arc pylon loomed above both of them. But all his dreams were in black and white.

~

            Piero, as ever, dreams in blue. The Void is unremarkable; the tea is appetizing, but the time stretches on and on. He sips the tea and stares at the paper beside him, a ragged, unfinished sketch of what appears to be a figure with wings. Unfinished because there is a hole in the center, scrubbed out with charcoal. Piero knows that he must work out the piece that should be placed in the center, but so far he has not been able to.

            He puts his head on one side. A difficult puzzle. It may take some time to solve.


	2. Seed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kirin Jindosh attempts to be hospitable, and Piero Joplin watches Emily from somewhere far away.

_A number of different procedures to mimic the phenomenon of randomness have been proposed. Different or similar, all must start in the same place, with the generation of an initial point. – Anton Sokolov, Musings on Numerical Recipes_

            “Wake up, old man,” the guard grunted, and Anton found himself dragged back to consciousness. Age had seeped into his bones, or maybe it was simply the chill of his prison. Whatever it was, his body ached, bone-deep and horrible. The damp conditions he was being kept in had exacerbated the old weakness in his lungs, and as the guard attempted to heave him off the bed, he leaned over, convulsing with a hacking cough.

            “Up.” The guard pulled him upright, and Anton tried to muster a glare, but he was fairly sure the guard didn’t even notice. It was difficult to look intimidating when you hadn’t had any sleep and you were dying by inches. He wished the Outsider would hurry it up. The waiting was irksome. He passed a hand over his eyes. Even the flippancy was difficult to maintain.

            The guard fitted him with the same handcuffs he always used and walked him toward the elevator. So. Kirin had time to spend with him, then. How much longer was he going to survive this? Several weeks ago, he had predicted he’d be dead in seventeen days, yet here he was, still breathing.

            As always, the room the guard ushered him into was plush and luxurious, with a round oaken table in the center, a thick red carpet on the floor, and Anton’s old pupil sitting in the center, puffing on his fingers. “Ah, Mssr. Sokolov,” he said, flashing a winning smile. “Take a seat.”

            Anton sank into the indicated chair. “Fuck off,” he said exhaustedly. “Can we skip the pleasantries?”

            “Oh, come, surely there is something I can offer you for your assistance? You are, after all, the most brilliant mind I have ever met, other than my own.”

            “Petja was worth ten of you,” Anton growled, stung past endurance almost immediately. The next moment, he wanted to bite his tongue off. Up until now, he’d managed to avoid saying anything about Piero, but he had barely slept the night before, kept awake by the worsening of his cough. He saw the curiosity flare in Jindosh’s eyes. “And who is Petja?”

            Hell, maybe he’d be able to goad Jindosh into killing him. “The most remarkable mind I have ever met.”

            The other man betrayed nothing, other than a quick tilt of the head. “A natural philosopher?”

            “Aren’t you going to offer me something to drink?” Anton leaned back in his chair, muscles protesting, but there was a grim amusement flickering in his gut.

            “Of course; where are my manners? Would you have a Tyvian red?” Jindosh’s eyes glittered angrily, but he poured a glass from the bottle of expensive wine at his elbow and offered it to Anton. “Now, back to business. You’ve had quite some time to think over my offer now. Even if working with me isn’t its own reward, at least it will be less painful, no?”

            Anton sipped the wine, lifting it to his lips with both hands. Good, as always. Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned back. “Fuck no,” he responded, almost cheerfully, and Jindosh twitched slightly. “Having to stare at your face is bad enough,” Anton informed him. “It’s like the Outsider took a piss in a dead river krust and left it outside overnight.”

Jindosh’s lips thinned. “Who is Petja?” he repeated.

            Anton felt a grim smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “The only man smart enough to keep up with me. The strangest and best thing that ever happened to me.”

            “Mm.” Jindosh sipped at his own wine. “I will need more of a description than that. Several unidentified corpses were recovered from the temporary quarters you inhabited in the city.”

            The pain caught Anton directly in his abdomen; his hands clutched at the wine glass. Images passed in front of his eyes. The deck of the _Dreadful Wale_ , slippery with moisture. The figure slipping through the darkness as Piero’s head turned slowly in bafflement. The knife—the soft little cry Piero gave—and the blood spilling dark around the fingers clutching at his throat.

            Esmond dead, Jessamine dead, Piero dead. By the Void, he felt old. “I’m not going to help you, Kirin,” he said softly.

            “But why not? You are truly one of the most brilliant minds of our age. I only want the opportunity to work with you again; that’s all I have ever wanted.”

            “If you won’t believe that I think you’re fucking insane, maybe you’ll believe me when I say I want nothing to do with the man who had my lover murdered in front of me.” The words came out cold and small.

            Jindosh barked out a confused laugh. “Haven’t you had hundreds? Do you really prize such an act over the intellectual stimulation I could offer?”

            Petja’s eyes fixed on him that first time in the Golden Cat, looking up from between his legs. Both of them had lasted all of two minutes. He had easily been the least experienced, least skillful person Anton had ever taken to bed. Anton laughed himself in response, though there was no mirth to it. “Kirin, you fucking idiot; are you implying that no man could do both?”

            A dull, angry flush rose to Kirin’s face. “If you would deign to work with me—”

            Anton leaned forward. “You think you could outdo the success of the men who cured the Rat Plague in a scavenged lab in a dying city?”

            He saw the understanding dawn in the other man’s eyes, and the anger and hurt that flashed far deeper. Jindosh rose to his feet, calling for his guards. “He won’t listen to reason,” he said shortly. “Put him on the machine.”

            “There’s the pupil I knew,” Anton said grimly, as they hoisted him out of the chair. “So impatient to break everything apart. You can split me down to particulate matter, and you’ll never have what you want.”

            “You underestimate my devices, old man.”

            “You overestimate the separability of people. You cannot take a man’s heart and leave his head intact.”

            Jindosh leaned toward him, eyes wide and dark. “Oh, I think you’ll find that I can, Mssr. Sokolov. I think you’ll find that I can.”

            The machine, when they strapped him into it, was already humming softly; the vibration shuddered through his aching bones, and he closed his eyes, swallowing a sob at the pain of it. As the machine powered up, the humming grew louder, and he had a moment to wonder if this would be the day that he didn’t wake up again, before the electricity arced and the world fell away into blue fragments.

~

            There is a round, clear lens set on top of an empty saucer. Beneath the saucer, there is a note in Piero’s own handwriting. He is relatively certain it was not there a moment before.

            Setting his charcoal down carefully, he picks up the note, straightens his glasses, and reads, _Oraculum lens. May be used to see distant locations outside of the world. May also be able to affect the flow of the Void into a target and disrupt their usage of magic. To be studied._

            Peculiar. He lifts the lens up, careful to touch only the sides and not smudge the center. It is a concave lens, and checking both sides reveals that while one is clear, the other is a strange, cloudy grey. There are runemarks etched carefully around the very edge, almost indiscernible at first glance. Although it has never been his passion, he recognizes several of them from Anton’s old notes. In recent years, Anton’s interest in the Outsider has waned somewhat, but he still sometimes takes his notes out and goes into a feverish flurry of activity, especially when prompted by the discovery of some new or unusual rune or shrine or ritual.

            Piero shrugs. Well, it is evident what he is intended to do with it. He raises the clear side to one eye, squinting the other eye shut.

            It is, as the note seemed to imply, rather like peering through a spyglass. He sees dark, jagged rocks with water spilling up them; cliffs shrouded in darkness falling into nothingness. Twisting the glass in front of his eye brings another area into focus, a round island surrounded by blue emptiness, covered in white bones with stringy, marshy grasses delineating its edges. He twists it in the other direction, and the first image returns.

            Turning his head shows him what appears to be contiguous area, and a few minutes of turning demonstrates to him that if there _is_ a limit on the number of turns, either a physical limit of the sort that would act on a spyglass or some sort of periodic boundary condition, it is not easily reached. So—powerful but difficult to use.

            He twists again and suddenly he’s staring at the interior of the _Dreadful Wale_ , one of the small cabins that Meagan was using mainly for storage, but there’s a huddled figure lying curled on top of the covers of the bunk that used to house several volumes of notes on the properties of electrical transport. As Piero watches in confusion, it blinks and opens its dark eyes. Emily’s eyes are slightly red, and her cheeks are thin and pinched.

            After a moment, Emily sighs, shaking out her hair, and rolls out of the bed. She rubs her arms as if she’s cold, then crosses to the door and opens it. Beyond it, Piero sees, after adjusting the lens slightly, not the familiar close corridors of Meagan’s ship, but a floating tumble of iron-grey rocks.

            A figure stands, waiting for Emily. A slim face surrounded by spiky hair and a pair of up-tilted narrow eyes that Piero has never seen in person. Her unfinished portrait is tucked behind a bookshelf on Anton’s side of their study, usually completely out of sight. Once, out of curiosity, Piero pulled it free to study it, and was forced to admit he could understand why Anton had not finished it and why he kept it out of sight. There was a subtle wrongness about it—something about the eyes. They were too dark, and yet, the painting had a feeling of accuracy about it, as if it were the subject rather than the portraiture that was off.

            Now, here, the wrongness is much more obvious and it’s easy for Piero to put his finger on what it is. It is the same hovering sense of otherworldliness that hangs around the Outsider, the way that parts of the figure seem to shimmer slightly, the way the downward tension of gravity does not quite pull the folds of the clothing into the shapes Piero’s brain says it ought to.

            He cannot hear words through the lens, but he can see the tension riding in Emily’s shoulders and the mocking smile on Delilah’s lips. And, as it transpires, he does not need to be able to read lips to understand what Delilah is saying, not with her apparent penchant for visualization. She punctuates her speech to Emily with paintings made from nothing; a single wave of her gloved hand brings them to life within frames of bone and ash.

            The tale that plays out in front of Piero’s eyes is sordid and simple, a sour, small story of betrayal that he’s seen played out a thousand times before. One favored sister, a fight, and the unfavored sister is ejected with her caretaker. He is tempted almost to shrug. Petty cruelty is so wearily familiar.

            _You built a shrine to me_ , the Outsider says in his mind, _you made an altar of your loneliness and your hatred, and you offered up your entire life._ Somewhere, there is a world where Piero and Anton built an arc pylon together, where a Piero consumed by bitterness let his rival die in the smoke and flame filling his workshop and thought himself content, thought the bitterness inside him quenched.

            The thought makes him flinch, because his mind can map every inch of the weary years such a Piero would have had to tread. How long would it have been before he made himself up a tincture of coldwort and let himself drift away, with nothing left to keep him moving? Or would he have found something else, a new hurt compelling him to rail and lash out against the world?

            The paintings make his stomach twist oddly, and it’s too long before he understands why. When the fourth painting forms, the inside of a studio, he finally recognizes the long, tapering strokes, and the tea feels cold beneath his hands. The style is markedly different, but there are enough similarities for the relationship to become clear. Delilah was trained by Anton.

            Even after Emily has ripped herself out of the Void again, Piero watches Delilah, following her movements through minute adjustments of the lens. She paces through her space in the Void, and he watches as she rearranges it to her liking. Piero has never seen the Void obey the impulses of an entity other than the Outsider, and he does not like to see it now. There is a palpable sense of wrongness at watching it, and yet, he cannot help but be impressed with the artistry with which she forces the dark stone to conform to her desires.

            It is obvious where those desires lie. She builds palaces and thrones in the dark stone, spires that rise so tall into the sky that the tops disappear into the swirling mist—and yet, in this place outside of time, size is meaningless; they could just as easily be the building blocks of a child.

            _I saw cities_ , Anton’s voice murmurs from somewhere far away. _Huge, great blocks of obsidian stone rising far higher into the sky than anything a man could make, and yet they were deserted, crumbling_.

            Piero shudders at the sudden weight of eternity pressing down on his shoulders. _And all we make will vanish beneath the crumbling of the centuries, all we are lost in formless blue_. And yet despite that, they keep moving, hands clasped before the darkness, fighting for the candle flame they share between them, no matter how fleeting it must be. There is good in this world, and no reason to waste one’s light on vengeance. Piero considers his own lesson in the matter to have been fortuitous, if hard-earned, perhaps more fortuitous than he deserved.

After she apparently tires of building topless towers, Delilah seats herself on one of the dark thrones. At a wave of her hand, an easel and a set of paints appear. The painting stretched across the easel is already half-completed. It shows a young girl at a long table piled high with sweets. The shimmering crown on her head glows brilliant white. Beside her, only sketched in outline, another little girl leans towards her, holding out a piece of cake on a fork for her to eat. And behind her, a man smiles down beatifically, his hand on the little girl’s shoulder. It has been a long time since Piero saw the face of the previous Emperor, but he is quite recognizable, as is the expression of love and devotion on his face.

            Quietly, feeling strangely intrusive, Piero removes the lens from his eye and sets it neatly on the table. This turn of events is going to be difficult for him to process.


	3. Initialization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Anton remembers Delilah and Piero visits a sleeping Emily.

_Begin by choosing three points that form the vertex of a triangle; denote each with a different color. – Piero Joplin, Procedure for the Chaos Game_

 

            “Is Penelope available?” Anton leaned against the dark wood of the Madame’s desk. His head was already spinning somewhat less than comfortably from the alcohol he had consumed earlier, and he was exhausted. A good, uncomplicated fuck was exactly what he needed right now, and Penelope was extremely professional. By now, he’d almost consider her a friend, or the closest thing he had to one outside of Esmond Roseburrow in this cursed city. Madame Helen hemmed and hawed, then handed him the key to the Silver Room.

            Anton eyed it suspiciously. “I haven’t paid you yet,” he pointed out.

            “On the house,” Helen said, eyes flickering away from him.

            “Look, I just want a normal fuck,” Anton groaned. “I don’t want a bonus, I don’t want you trying out something new on me, I just want to fuck Penelope.”

            Helen still held out the key, making no other remark. Anton stared at her, wanting to rage and scream, knowing that it was pointless. Whatever was happening here was beyond his control; he could either take the key or turn around and leave. Well, he supposed, he could probably raise a sufficient stink to get the Cat shut down for a day or two, but that seemed pointlessly petty. Less fuss, less mess. He almost turned and left, but curiosity raised its head and, instead, he snatched the key with bad grace and stumped off in the direction of the Silver Room.

            As he’d expected, the woman lying back across the bed was not Penelope. She was waif-thin with large dark eyes in a sallow face and a messy shock of short dark hair, unlike Penelope’s comfortable pink-and-white complexion. Anton threw up his hands. “You’re not even one of the Cat girls,” he complained.

            “You don’t have to pay me,” she said, her eyes following him, body tense.

            He sank down on the side of the bed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his hands to stop the incipient headache. “Good job, you’ve identified the problem,” he spat after a moment.

            “What?” She sat up, a little too quickly, reaching out with a thin hand in a way he suspected was supposed to be seductive.

            “Get out,” Anton said tiredly. “I’m not going to fuck you. Either tell me what the fuck you thought you were doing or get out so I can at least take a nap in a nice bed.”

            “You were going to fuck a whore! I’m not a whore, surely that’s a nice step up—”

            “ _Everyone is a whore!_ ” Anton’s sudden roar was partly ameliorated by the heavy cushions and brocaded hangings that served to absorb the sound, but it was still loud enough to make the young woman on the bed flinch back minutely. “You want something from me,” he snarled, shoving an angry finger at her, “but you think that because you’re not asking for money, that makes it entirely different.”

            “The whole point is you don’t—”

            “Shut up.” She didn’t, but Anton had tuned out whatever absurd justification she was coming up with, and he spoke over her, loudly enough and long enough that she finally blinked and shut her mouth angrily. “Do you think I don’t have the option to fuck people other than the girls here? Do you think ‘poor old Sokolov, he can’t get laid if he doesn’t shell out gold, he’ll be so _grateful_ that a half-starved wench like me will take him to bed he’ll do whatever I want’? Or have you just read too many novels, girl? Listen: you want something. Fine. So do I, and it’s not you. I fuck whores because _they_ tell me what I’m paying them in advance instead of holding it over my head later on down the road. The money’s a cheap price to get out of the _fucking headache_ I get whenever I screw someone else.”

            She stared at him, her mouth a thin, angry line, and she drew her thin silk robe around her and started to sit up. “I want you to teach me,” she said steadily, staring at him intently. “I’m a good painter, I’m a _great_ painter, I will be—”

            “Go away now.”

            This time, she listened, but not without a glance back. “I’ll show you my paintings, you’ll see—”

            Anton snorted and rolled onto his side on the bed, ignoring her. After a moment, he felt it creak as she got up. Good, at least this way he could have his damn nap. A few minutes later, Penelope arrived, embarrassed, apologizing for Helen’s behavior.

            “I do not give a fuck,” Anton told her, and with a strong sense of relief, handed her his coin and let her ride him.

            Several days later, he was waiting for Esmond at the Hound Pits Pub, looking forward to a much-needed calm evening of drinking and talking about current equations and oil processing after a hectic day of entirely too much politicking, when someone put a sketchbook down in front of him. Glancing up, he found he was looking at the same thin young woman from the Golden Cat.

            “Outsider’s balls, not you again,” Anton groaned. “Fuck off, will you?”

            “Look at them,” she told him steadily. She slid a glass of brandy down in front of him. “I bought you a drink as well.”

            “Admittedly a better bribe than your last attempt,” he grumbled. He had to admit that her persistence in the face of his anger was better than most people managed, even if it was also annoying. He flipped open the sketchbook, not certain what to expect.

            She was better than he’d thought she’d be, he had to give her that much. Her work was crude and poorly formed, clearly without enough practice, but she had a good eye and a good imagination. She was working with thin paper and scratchy colored pencils, but she had managed to capture her subjects well enough. A kingsparrow ruffled its feathers on one page; a whaled breached near the harbor on the next. Further along were a flowering tree and a young girl with her face turned away. All of them, clumsily drawn as they were, were sketched vibrantly and with passion.

            “Your lines are terrible,” Anton told her. “Your grasp of proportion is clumsy. You clearly lack formal training.” As had he, to begin with. He took a long pull from the brandy at his elbow, warming to his task. “Your colors are garish, your subject matter is banal, and your choice of media appalling.”

            He glanced up at her. Her chin was firm, her eyes flashing angrily, but she said nothing.

            “If you come by my quarters at the academy tomorrow no later than four and absolutely no earlier than half past two, I’ll see what can be done to rectify that.”

            She drew in her breath in a hiss of surprise. “You—wonderful bastard.”

            “Now fuck off and let me drink in peace.”

            To his relief, she didn’t argue.

~

            Electricity sizzled and popped near his ear. Jessamine died, and died again. Anton moaned, reaching for the past, sliding stubbornly backwards towards happier times.

~

            In the deep blue nothingness all around, Piero has cautiously begun to traverse the bounds of his current universe. There is the white table in the center with its unending supply of tea. Around it, beneath Piero’s feet, is a roughly circular patch of solid rock with a diameter of about twenty paces. At one end, the rock rises into a sheer tumble that, if Piero stares at it for too long, appears to be a cliff he could easily fall up. On the other end is a series of little rock stepping stones descending away from the central area, but they fade quickly into darkness, and Piero has not yet mustered up the courage to traverse his way down them. He is particularly concerned that if he were to do so, he would not be able to find his way back.

            Returning from pacing around the bounds of his rock for perhaps the tenth time, he finds another note resting beneath his cup of tea, once again written in his own handwriting. _Take three long strides down the broken stepping stones,_ it reads. _Turn right and then follow the path you can see through three right turns of the lens. Return swiftly once you have retrieved the second lens._ At the bottom of the note, rather than a signature, there is a neat sketch, a repeated pattern of triangles subdivided over and over again into smaller and smaller ones. Piero frowns. It is a pattern that has been on his mind very much lately. He and Anton have been making a game out of finding ways to generate it. If you perform the correct series of steps with pencil and paper, you can always find it emerging from the chaos, a strange kind of order.

            If it were not for the triangle pattern, he would be rather suspicious of the appearance of the note. The lens was one thing, but, even in his own writing, following a note into a darkness that he could not see, when any misstep could have him tumbling for a literal eternity—well, that was not a prospect he could easily approach with equanimity. The repeated triangle is certainly a symbol he would leave for himself to convince himself of the legitimacy of such a note, and it is unlikely that anyone else would know enough about the ins and outs of his life with Anton to be able to do so. He feels a momentary chill at the thought that the Outsider would know, but the thought makes him vaguely ill, and he pushes it aside.

            Instead, he procures the lens and returns to the stepping stones. _Three long strides_ take him to the edge, and he hovers nervously, then takes a deep, shuddering breath, and turns right. Holding the lens up to his eye does, indeed, reveal after three right turns a narrow, sloping walkway through the nothingness to either side. Instead of blue, there is a distinct yellowness to the dim light pervading it, a yellowness which only grows stronger as Piero gingerly makes his way down it. It takes him seven steps to recognize the guttering light of a tallow candle, and he halts, breathless, for an instant.

            After he turns the next corner, he finds himself standing inside Emily’s bedroom in the _Dreadful Wale_. There is a deceptively small bundle curled up in the bed. Emily has one arm above her head as if to ward off attackers, and she is sleeping fitfully. Every so often, soft noises, whimpers and moans, erupt from her lips. Piero wants to go to her, to hold her in his arms and comfort her, as if she were still the child that he and Anton tutored and watched over as she grew, but he does not dare. He has never known how to comfort anyway, he tells himself, and the rationalization is enough to draw him onwards towards the glint of candlelight on glass lying on the desk.

            As the note indicated, there is a lens laid carelessly out on the desk on top of an open notebook, full of Emily’s handwriting, which, despite some attempts by Corvo, has ended up rather long and spiky, perhaps unsurprisingly reminiscent of Anton’s. Pushing his spectacles up his nose, Piero carefully reaches out and takes the lens—he half expects his hand to pass through, but it does not, and he can feel the weight of the lens in his left hand, precisely the same as the weight of the lens he still has pressed to his right eye. After a moment, he bends over to read the paragraphs that are visible.

            _—death of his husband weighs greatly on him, I imagine. I am sick to my stomach to think of it myself, so I tell myself that I must keep moving until Delilah’s threat has been removed. I cannot lose myself to grief until after I have recovered my throne, and perhaps not even then. So this is what has become of the happy child who weathered the Interregnum. It’s a sobering thought, but I won’t dwell on it._

_I have made real progress against Delilah in the past day. I infiltrated the Royal Conservatory and found that Breanna Ashworth was constructing a device she referred to as ‘the Oraculum,’ which allowed her to spy upon and influence the decisions of the Oracular Order in Delilah’s favor. I don’t quite understand all the ins and outs, but tampering with the device by installing certain lenses caused it to drain Ashworth of her powers, rendering her harmless._

_I wish I could talk with Anton more about this, or better yet, Piero. If these lenses are capable of affecting a person’s magical powers, they must have some tie to the Void, but I do not know what it could be._

Here, Emily’s handwriting grows sloped and shaky with weariness before trailing off. Piero tucks the second lens into his pouch and starts back the way he came, his mind already working on the problem of it. It seems unlikely that such an item drains magic indiscriminately if it requires installation in another device to function in such a manner. And it clearly has properties of its own, at least when used outside of the normal realm of matter. Perhaps, he hypothesizes, its function out here is limited, dependent on how much magic it has previously absorbed. If that is the case, he will have to take care not to overuse it. It is not a currently investigable hypothesis, but it does sound a note of caution.

            As he retreats back up the narrow passage that leads to the stepping stones, he glances backward. Emily stirs in her sleep but does not wake, and Piero cannot deny a certain leaden weariness at the sight of her unrest, yet he knows that the only way to relieve it is to keep on and on until the end is in sight. However long that may take.


	4. Memory Kernel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anton remembers Jessamine.

_If one is interested in collective behavior, one can either follow each object in a system, in which case the system at any point in time is wholly defined by its current state, or instead one can track the behavior of a single object, abstracting away the actions of the others into a single function; in this case, however, the system gains a dependence on previous conditions. – Alexandria Hypatia, On Collective Behavior_

            It was hot and unpleasant, and Anton’s neck just under his collar itched fiercely. He scanned the room for Esmond, but his mentor and partner was talking with a group that was fifty percent black-robed academy philosophers and fifty percent nobles wearing clothing as brightly colored as any bird doing its mating dance, and with as much sense.

            After spending a long day wading through bureaucratic bullshit in the wake of his graduation from the Academy, the last thing he wanted to deal with was more politicking, even if he was better at it than Esmond. Besides, Esmond didn’t have to put up with the incessant bullshit that Anton did due to his youth and his origin. The fucking accent. He needed to lessen it. It was all very well to be able to attract arbitrary nobles to bed, but in day-to-day life it was a nuisance. Besides, he’d rather fuck a whore any day. Less idiotic dancing around perfectly natural issues, and more intelligent conversation at least half the time.

            With an internal sigh, he reached for another drink, but he wasn’t paying attention, and his hand swept it sideways and right off the table. There was a clink and a crunch, mercifully muffled by the ambient noise. Damn. He probably shouldn’t just leave the broken glass there, and he didn’t feel like tracking down some poor servant and making them do it. Shaking his head, he ducked down to see how much of a mess he’d made and came face-to-face with someone hiding under the table.

            After the initial surprise, Anton took a moment to consider his options. On the one hand, bright, loud, full of vapid idiots trying to curry favor with other vapid idiots. On the other hand, cool, muffled by the table cloth, plenty of space next to someone sensible enough to take such an option.

            There was no contest. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, he ducked underneath the table with her, letting the cloth fall behind him. “Outsider’s balls, you have good ideas,” he told the young woman crouched there.

            She blinked in surprise, then grinned at him. “You’re the first person to find me here,” she told him.

            “I’m highly intelligent,” Anton informed her. “Also I dropped my drink, good for me.”

            “You’re Master Sokolov, aren’t you?”

            “Was it the beard or the accent that gave it away?” In the relative dimness under the table, he couldn’t make her out very well, could only see a tall female figure with her dark hair pulled back behind her head.

            “The beard is _very_ distinctive,” she admitted. “There are one or two other Tyvians around court, you know.”

            “The way these buffoons talk, I’m the only one,” grumbled Anton. “Fuck, it’s enough to make a man take to drink.”

            “Which I assume it has, since you can no longer keep hold of yours.”

            Anton felt a surprised laugh jerk out of his lips. “You have me there.” He shifted awkwardly, shifting his muscles to a slightly less uncomfortable position. “You also have the advantage of me. Can I ask your name?”

            Somewhat to his surprise, she hesitated. “Promise you won’t overreact?”

            Something in her voice made him lean forward in the darkness and peer closer. Oval face, high cheekbones, aquiline features—Anton felt his eyebrows going up. “Fuck me,” he muttered. “Well, this isn’t how I expected to meet you, Your Highness.”

            She groaned. “I should have just lied, shouldn’t I?”

            “Esmond’s trying to get the Academy to name me instead of him to the post of head. Frankly, I think they’re trying to push him to accept the post of Royal Physician. If he shoves that off on me as well, _Your Highness_ , I imagine we will be seeing quite a lot of each other, and I’d rather meet you like this.”

            She was silent. “That’s one way to look at it. You don’t much like politics, do you?”

            He snorted. “Politics is shit. Esmond keeps getting me to do it because I’m capable of stringing two words together that these idiots will listen to. Even if it’s just because they think they’ll be able to get their own personal Kallisarr into bed with them.” He felt for the flask of cheap, bitter Tyvian wine he’d shoved down his jacket before setting foot in the building. “Have a drink, Jessamine?”

            Another moment of silence, and Anton felt his stomach sinking suddenly into his boots. Much as he made noise about hating politics, he knew that he _needed_ it, needed all these fucking nobles, if he wanted to be able to keep doing the work he felt as if he would die without. Esmond—Esmond didn’t understand that. It had all come much easier to him.

            Jessamine shifted towards him. “Why not?” she said slowly, holding out her hand. Breath rushed back into Anton’s lungs. He hadn’t misjudged her after all, then, the little Empress.

            As she took the flask and raised it to her lips, the sudden rush of relief caused him to say recklessly, “Why don’t we get out of here? Fuck all these idiots, let’s go somewhere and get drunk.”

            Chuckling, Jessamine took another drink. “I like the way you think.”

            An hour later, Anton had managed to wheedle his way into a room at the Golden Cat, and he and Jessamine were playing chess with the whores. “No,” he told a pretty courtesan named Prudence, “I will _not_ quote _The Young Prince of Tyvia_ at you, not unless you’re prepared to pay me.”

            She pouted, but another girl, whose name was Penelope, put a hand on her shoulder. “You wouldn’t perform for nothing, either,” she pointed out with a shrug. “Why should you expect him to?”

            “Well, it’s what Tyvians _do_ , isn’t it?”

            Anton raised an eyebrow at her. “You know exactly what I do,” he pointed out. “I know you were watching me with Rosaline last week.”           

            He glanced across at Jessamine, but she just raised an amused eyebrow at him and captured his bishop. A good move. Damn. He thought for a minute and moved a pawn.

            “You’re boring,” Prudence complained. “I’ve waited my _whole_ life to meet someone from Tyvia, and—”

            Penelope rolled her eyes. “This is why you don’t get paid to fuck Anton,” she said. “No, Jess, don’t make that move. He’ll mate you in three turns if you do.”

            “Penelope, where is your loyalty?”

            “I get paid to fuck you, not to help you win at chess.”

            “Heartfelt,” Anton muttered. “Fuck.”

            “Check,” Jessamine said, sounding very pleased with herself.

            “You are all conspiring against me.”

            “Prudence isn’t. She just wants you to whisper sweet Tyvian nothings to her,” Penelope grinned.

            Anton raised an eyebrow at her. “Have you told her what I whisper to you?”

            “I don’t think she’d understand it. I don’t always understand it, either.”

            He grinned at her. Penelope was a favorite of his. “I’ll paint you someday,” he told her lazily.

            “Only if you pay me,” she grinned back. “With proper money, mind, not the painting.”

            “A painting of mine will be worth a lot someday, you’ll see. People will be desperate for an early Sokolov.”

            “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

            “Less chatting, more losing, please,” Jessamine told him sternly. “You’re just trying to avoid making a move at this point.”

            “Really,” Anton replied silkily. “Check. Mate in two.”

            Jessamine stared at the chessboard, moved her king.

            Anton reached over and moved another piece. “Check. Mate in one.”

            “Oh,” she breathed. “I see it now. Damn.”

            “Yes.” Anton leaned back, insouciantly resting his legs on the couch. “You’re surprisingly apt at chess for one of royal blood, Your Highness.”

            “It was something to do,” Jessamine responded, almost automatically, and he looked up at her interestedly. In person, the face that looked distant and serious in paintings and at a distance was more mobile, and she had a habit of crinkling her forehead that was oddly endearing. For some reason, she reminded him of Delilah. That intense focus, and the way she drew her knees to her chest as if she were cold. The gesture sat oddly on an Empress-to-be.

            Anton did not generally enjoy painting nobles, although it was an easy way to obtain coin. But he thought he would like to paint her. With an easy smile, he reached for another bottle of wine. What if he painted her like this, bending over a chessboard with Penelope’s low voice muttering advice and instruction in her ear, the rest of the Golden Cat whores crowded around with interest? _Algorithmic Partners_ would make a nice title.

            Yes, Anton thought, settling back into the comfortable couch, he was glad he had met the little heir.

~

            He never had painted Penelope. He had a sketch of her somewhere, sprawled sleeping across one of the couches in the Golden Cat, an arm flung over her eyes to ward off the light, totally unselfconscious. He’d meant to turn it into a painting, but there had never been time, and the days he thought he’d have with her in the future were cut short when she became one of the first victims of the plague.

            She’d been one of the lucky ones, Anton thought bitterly as he surfaced in the chair, slumping limply back because the electrical current had been switched off, ears ringing, temples stinging. The plague had hit her hard and early, before the true panic set in, and within three days, she had been in a coma. He hadn’t even known until he limped back to the Golden Cat in the wake of the first panic and tried to engage her services. He’d seen her once more before she died, tucked up pale and fading in a bed in the corner, and that was the image that had stayed with him. He wished now that he had sketched her doing something other than sleeping.

            “Anton.” Jindosh again. “How are you feeling?”

            _Like I was run over by a tallboy._ “Fine, thank you,” Anton said carefully.

            “Have you considered my offer any more carefully?”

            From what Anton had gathered from overhearing discussions with the guards, Jindosh’s recordings, and the scraps of notes he’d managed to glimpse while being hussled around the mansion, Jindosh somehow believed he could remove Anton’s objections—remove Anton’s _conscience_ —while leaving his mind intact. Despite his horror at the thought of what such a machine might _actually_ do, Anton found it grimly amusing to pretend it had functioned in the way that Jindosh futilely hoped that it would.

            “Yes,” he said, turning his head sideways and giving Jindosh his best wide-eyed innocent look. It would have fooled Piero for perhaps a moment, Jessamine not at all.

            Jindosh’s mouth gaped slightly open. “You have?”

            “A city full of clockwork soldiers is a fascinating problem.” Anton tipped his head seriously to one side. “Much easier than people. Clockwork doesn’t piss, doesn’t shit, doesn’t fuck, and it always does what you tell it to. Why not replace everything with it?”

            For a moment, he thought Jindosh had actually taken the bait. For a moment, something sudden, bright, and strange seemed to illuminate his former pupil’s eyes—and then it was gone, and Jindosh was scowling.

            “You mock me.”

            “You make it so easy,” Anton sighed theatrically. “Now, if you don’t have anything new to say, I have an appointment with a failed invention of yours, I imagine.”

            The sound of Jindosh grinding his teeth together was grimly satisfying, even through the haze of electricity and the horrible ache intensifying in his bones.

~

            Anton flopped back onto the cushions with a groan. “Outsider’s balls, the things people will believe!” The lights of the little room, barely more than a curtained-off alcove, were low but welcoming. Jessamine was a dark, backlit outline for an instant before she stepped forward and flung herself down onto the couch beside him.

            “Another drink?” she asked with a grin. His head was spinning slightly, so he must have gone through a bottle or two already, but he grinned back, accepting the offering as she held out another, taking a deep draught from it. Jess settled herself on his lap and started to rock her hips slowly against his, and he put an arm around her waist, settling into a lazy rhythm. “You encourage the gossip,” she told him. “You may find it ridiculous that the citizens of Dunwall so stereotype you for your place of origin, but you certainly do nothing to dissuade them of their preconceived notions.”

            “It has certain—” He huffed out a noise as Jess ground down right above his prick, “—certain benefits, admittedly. _Fuck’s_ sake, Jess!” The last exclamation was dragged out of him as she undid his belt and reached into his trousers. He hastily put the wine onto the side-table. It was good wine; better it not be spilt. “Still,” he grunted, untucking her shirt and sliding his hands down her trousers in turn. “You’d think the idiots could at least come up with gossip that was believable.”

            “What have they said about you now, poor man?” Jess asked in a mocking tone of voice as she slithered out of her trousers. “That birds nest in your beard? That you can make a woman come with a touch?”

            “I can make _anyone_ come with a t— _fuck_ , Jess.” She had two fingers between her legs and was rocking against him, her hand trapping the thin fabric of his trousers against his erection.

            “Then you’re _losing_ your touch,” she told him breathlessly. “Come on, old man, out of your clothes.”

            He groaned, managing to get his hands down and open his belt and the front of his trousers. Jessamine sank down on him with a hissing gasp. “ _Fuck_ yes,” she breathed, and for a few moments, all conversation was forgotten as Anton clutched at her thighs and bucked up into her heat, as Jess drove herself up and down, fucking him into the couch. She grabbed his hand, guiding it between her legs, and moaned as she jolted, her movements turning jerky, and then she gasped, going rigid. Anton forced himself towards stillness, holding just the gentle pressure of his fingers against her, teasing her through her climax.

            “By the _Void_ ,” she moaned finally, her knees going loose around him.

            Anton forced himself to remain motionless a moment more, though the light brush of her motions was tantalizing. He distracted himself by running through formulae in his head, tapping out a sequence of prime numbers on her knee. “You’ve been taking the draught I made for you, yes?”

            “Of course, I’m not an idiot.”

            “Thank the Outsider,” Anton groaned, utterly heartfelt, as he allowed himself to thrust again. Twice—three times—four times, and then he climaxed, hard and short and hot, his fingers digging into the curve of her hips as she rocked lazily against him. He sagged back against the couch, still breathing heavily; Jess hummed in her throat and slowly disengaged, slumping down onto the couch beside him.

            “So, if it’s not the birds in your beard, what were you fussing about?”

            “Quieter, someone will hear you.”

            Jessamine blinked at him. “Just to clarify, you do _not_ , in fact, have birds—”

            “Use your head, woman, of course not. I just don’t want yet another absurd rumor floating around.” He realized he had been stroking his beard, and he frowned in irritation and pulled Jess towards him. “Get into my lap.”

            “I like the sound of that,” Jessamine murmured, and Anton slid a single finger carefully between her legs. She made a sudden, soft noise.

            “In any case, the rumor, if you _must_ know,” Anton answered distractedly, “is that _twenty-two_ years ago, I had five women in one night.”

            “Precocious, for a sixteen-year-old, I suppose—” She made an approving noise as he moved his finger gently.

            “I was _six_ , Jessamine. Six years old and burning with fever in my bed on the Tyvian steppes.”

            A more confused vocalization. Jess’s words tended to desert her in the post-orgasmic haze, but after a moment, she seemed to find them. “Thirty-eight minus twenty-two is sixtee— _ah_ — _yes_ —” He flicked his finger up and down, and she caught at his hand with hers. “—not quite—so fast— _nnnn_ —” She jerked, curled, pressing down around his hand in her second climax. He waited for it to ebb, then lazily moved his finger again. Jessamine slapped his hand. “ _Enough_ ,” she said. Then, “by the Void, Anton, you’re not thirty-eight at all, are you?”

            “It is possible that thirty-eight is a slight exaggeration.”

            “You’ve been telling everyone you’re ten years older than you are? Why?”

            “Oh, you have no concept, have you?” He sounded bitterer than he’d intended. “People do not take me seriously as it is, Jess. What do you think they would say if they realized the head of the Academy was not yet thirty?”

            She burst out laughing. “I cannot believe I didn’t realize.”

            “Disappointed?” He elbowed her in the side, and she elbowed him back.

            “In myself. I should have been able to figure it out.”

            “I forgive you for the mental lapse.” Draping an arm across her shoulders, he leaned against her, and she leaned back, companionable warmth seeping between the two of them. “So, to what do I owe this evening’s pleasure? I thought you were planning on an evening with Corvo.”

            Jessamine drew her naked legs into her chest, her bottom lip poking out in what could only be described as a pout. “He refused me. Again.”

            “What an idiot.”

            “ ‘But Jessamine, I have known you since childhood.’ ‘But Jessamine, as your protector, I would not want to take advantage.’ I swear by the Void he was trembling with desire.”

            Anton patted her hand. “It’s a matter of time. He’ll come around. Anyone with eyes can see the way he looks at you.”

            “Oh, Anton, I don’t know; what if he never does? What happens then?”

            “Then I challenge him to a duel for your favor and deliberately lose. His honor will demand that he bed you immediately.”

            She snorted with laughter, wriggling against him. “You always know how to make me laugh.”

            “Why, yes, I _am_ incredibly talented, thank you for noticing, Your Highness.”

            She shoved him, then lay against his shoulder. “You’re a good friend, Anton.”


	5. Epistasis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get complicated, both in the Void and in Anton's past.

_In such a case, it is clear that the resultant properties of the child are dependent only upon the similar properties of the parents; however, without a deeper knowledge of the mechanism, one could easily imagine that in other cases a deeper knowledge of secondary traits would be required for predictive accuracy. – Radmus Eran, Combinations of Parental Traits in Cross-fertilized Solanum Inanisorum_

            When Anton opened the door to his bedroom, he was not expecting to see the Empress curled up on his bed. Jessamine looked small and huddled and nervous, almost child-like, her knees drawn up to her chest. She looked up as he approached, and he was thankful to see that her eyes were not red, though there were deep, dark circles beneath them.

            “What’s troubling you, Your Grace?” Anton sat gingerly on the bed beside her. Their relationship had grown more strained in recent weeks, as they both took on more and more responsibilities and as Jessamine spent more and more time with Corvo, not that Anton begrudged her spending what little free time she had with the man she had loved nearly her whole life.

            “I have an issue, Tosha,” Jessamine whispered, using the shortened form of his name that almost no one else did. He had informed her of it one night when they were both truly, egregiously drunk and sworn her to secrecy the following day. She almost never used it.

            “What kind of issue?”

            A quirk of her lip. “A literal issue.” One hand stole to her belly; whether the gesture was conscious or unconscious, Anton couldn’t tell. His mind was too busy suddenly doing arithmetic. Eighty-five days. Eighty-five days since the last night he’d bedded her. Eighty-four days since the first night Corvo had.

            “Whose?” he asked hoarsely, hoping against hope that she knew how far along in the conception she was, that it could only have been conceived a few weeks ago, though he could already tell from her expression things weren’t going to be that simple.

            She attempted a smile. “Well, there are two options,” she mumbled, and Anton sank back against the wall, running a hand through his hair and muttering a string of creative and very Tyvian obscenities.

            “Corvo’s, then,” he said after a moment, and Jessamine tilted a questioning head at him. He raised an eyebrow at her. “The gossip will be easier to manage,” he explained.

            Still, no real understanding dawned in her eyes.

            “A half-Tyvian bastard on the throne? That’s just asking for trouble, Jess.”

            “Are you saying a half-Serkonan bastard is less trouble?”

            Anton leaned back. This whole situation required a delicacy and tact he was pretty sure he didn’t have. “The whole court thinks you’ve been fucking for five years already. Close enough to married,” he pointed out. “And I would be the worst father. Corvo? He’s not so bad. As long as you take charge of the child’s sense of humor.”

            A giggle forced its way out from between Jessamine’s lips. “You would,” she agreed. “You really _would_ be the worst father. It’s just—you…might be one anyway? The world doesn’t much care for sophistries when it comes to this kind of thing.”

            Anton rolled his eyes impatiently at her. “How much do you think it matters who sires the child?” he snapped. “All right, there’s some belief that traits of the parents can be passed on. So you may end up with a child who’s surprisingly resilient to cold. It doesn’t matter. You and Corvo are _lovers_ , Jess, and he will have the patience and the understanding to raise a child well. That’s what matters, not the fact I stuck my prick in you three months ago. Besides, there’s no way to know, so you might as well choose the truth best suited for your purpose.”

            “Truly? No way to know?” Jessamine leaned towards him, and Anton kept his face blank.

            “I am the Royal Physician,” he pronounced carefully. “The events in question were too close to one another to distinguish arithmetically; any midwife will tell you the same. Now stop worrying and go tell Corvo the good news. Let me know if he falls over.” _And don’t ask me about ways to tell after the child is born._ With only two fathers, there was a good chance that a blood test would be able to distinguish between them, but Anton trusted that very few men or women were aware of that fact. Jess knew him well, but she also lost to him at card games on occasion. He could bluff when he really had to—he hoped.

            Everything he had said to Jessamine was true: he would not be a good father; Corvo would; having a connection to the child through blood was something he viewed as far less important than what he knew Corvo would be capable of giving it. He just didn’t know if Jess would truly agree with him if, through some disaster, he was capable of showing that the child was biologically not Corvo’s, and he elected to simply not test the question.

            Jessamine fixed him with a scrutinizing look, but nodded, after a moment. “All right,” she said easily. “Perhaps you’ll do me the courtesy of confirming the midwife’s diagnosis first, O Royal Physician?”

            Anton rolled his eyes. “Probably a good idea,” he was forced to agree. “We wouldn’t want to give Corvo a heart attack for no reason.” And if, by some miracle, the midwife had been wrong, well, that would sort out the problem quite neatly.

            “Jess,” he said, as he carefully examined her stomach. “I do want to let you know that if you aren’t ready for this child, there are ways to eliminate the problem at this point.”

            “Abort it?” Jessamine sighed. “I should have known you’d suggest that.”

            Anton didn’t like the faint contempt in her voice, but he shrugged. “It’s safer than giving birth,” he replied. “And if you’re still worried about the possibility of a Tyvian father, you can nip it in the bud at the source. It’s not as if the thing is intelligent yet.”

            She let out an explosive sigh, followed by a short laugh. “You are—certainly something,” she said. “Thank you, but no. Even laying aside the fact that I’m not as blasé about ending a life as you are, I do need to have an heir at some point. Better not to risk something going wrong with having a child at all just to make it more convenient.”

            Anton, with an effort, refrained from pointing out that a stillbirth or late-stage miscarriage would do that far more effectively than aborting the child at this stage. At any rate, both Jessamine and her issue seemed healthy, so that was unlikely to become a concern. He hoped. “I am the Royal Physician,” he responded stiffly instead. “It is my job to tell you your options. And now that I’m sufficiently sure that your midwife was not lying, it’s time to go tell Corvo the happy tidings.”

            When Jessamine returned later and told him that the Royal Protector had literally tripped over his own feet and fallen into the fountain behind him, Anton couldn’t help a helpless fit of laughter that knocked him onto his backside on the bed.

~

            There is a tremor in the Void. Piero first noticed it when his pencil began to jitter in his hand, and he was forced to put it down lest his current sketch become unreadable. The ubiquitous blue light is dimming and turning almost orange. A glimmering haze seems to hang over everything.

            He hovers in indecision for several long minutes, but as the tremor grows stronger, he is forced to confess that his little island may be no safer than any other, and he pockets one lens, raises the other to his eye, and begins to search for the origin of the disturbance.

            He discovers quickly that the change in the light is by no means even. Rather, there is a center from which the orange is spreading, and, after another moment’s indecision, he starts toward it. It is difficult going, and it occurs to Piero as he makes a wobbling hop between two floating pieces of rock two or three feet apart that he ought to be frightened. Yet all he feels is curiosity mixed with frustration. He has come too far for fear to be a part of his concerns now. Besides, he thinks in grim amusement, there cannot be so very many other people wandering about here in this vast emptiness, and it has always been other people he feared most. Perhaps, too, the clarity that is always on him in his dreams helps him. He has never stayed so long inside a single dream, and it is a curious feeling, almost a lucid floating.

            He scrambles from rock to rock, so focused on keeping his feet on stable ground that it takes him far longer than he feels it ought to for him to notice that there is a vortex forming beneath his feet. But indeed, the rocks behind him are slow, those ahead moving faster in a tightening orbit like a slow current circling a drain.

            He is taking a particularly careful step into the more rapidly moving center, when a strange surging sound nearly knocks him off his feet. The noise is literally painful to hear, somehow simultaneously so shrill that it cuts through his ears and so low that it buzzes through his legs. Piero gasps, mouthing a word he learned from Anton, and drops to his knees with his hands clutched over his ears, although it does little to cut the agony in his head.

            There is a whooshing above him, and he stares up in consternation. His mouth falls open as a mottled black-and-white behemoth glides by above him. There is a rust colored stain around its mouth that might be blood but is more likely a form of algae he has occasionally noted as staining the whaling ships that come in from the sea every so often. It is a whale. There is a whale in the Void. And it is _singing_.

            It’s horrible, even through the thick flesh of his flattened palms. Although he has no idea how sound propagates here. None of the physical laws that he has learned so well can be correctly applied, and he knows this; yet it still surprises and frustrates him. Once again, he is helpless in the wake of something larger, something uncontrollable and ineffable, but instead of making him afraid, it only makes him angry.

            As the whalesong dies away, he forces himself back to his feet and makes a gesture in the direction of the creature as it swims onward above him, something quite obscene that he learned from Anton. Childish, perhaps, and the creature that it is aimed at will neither understand the movement nor is it particularly to blame for his feelings, but it makes him feel better anyway.

            There is white gravel clinging to his trousers, and somehow this infuriates him almost as much as the whale’s blithe defiance towards the laws of gravitation. Why should this particulate matter behave as it ought, when the rest of everything refuses?

            He does not know for how long he moves inward. Time has as little meaning as any of the other measures of the normal world in this place, but eventually he finds his footing becoming more secure beneath him. In the interim, the light around has become a strange mix of dim ambient blue and sharp, dancing golden-brown shadows. The fragment beneath his feet sinks slightly, and he realizes that the ground underneath him is water-soaked and marshy.

            Tall reeds rise waist-high, of a type that Piero is not familiar with, though they seem related to those he is used to seeing on the Glaiwes. He pauses as it occurs to him that he no longer knows where he is going, but even as he stops, he hears splashing footsteps and voices and laughter approaching, and the flickering golden lights of numerous torches appear, glinting against the black water near his feet.

            Frowning, Piero moves slowly to the side, crouching in the deep shadows of a stumpy and surprisingly determined-looking tree, trying to understand the approach of the first people he has seen close-up in this place other than—well. As the group approaches, he is able to see a group of rough-looking men and women wearing strange costume. The women wear long skirts and blue headscarves, while the men favor tunics over breeches. In the center of their group stumbles a young person of indeterminate gender, hands bound before them. They are attired in only a single piece of some sort of rough cloth bound at their waist with a hempen cord, and their face is marked with symbols that make Piero’s head pound to look at.

            The lights of the torches do not illuminate the figure in the middle, although they are not shrouded in darkness, either. Instead, the featureless blue light seems to hang around them, clinging to them, eliminating also all the shadows that should be inking the folds and dips in their clothing and flesh.

            The whole party passes so close to Piero that he can feel the heat of their torches on his skin, and there is a moment when the central figure seems to incline their head toward him. Their face is blank and pale, almost mask-like, and there is blood drying on their chin, trails of it leaking from a series of puncture wounds lining top and bottom lips where something—either metallic thread or thin wire—has been used to stitch their mouth shut. Piero shudders, and then the group is gone, fading into the fog amongst the rushes.

            They seem to disappear almost too quickly, puzzlingly quickly, and Piero is about to step out of the shadow of the tree to follow when he hears footsteps once more and stays still. This time the figure that approaches is garbed more ordinarily, in neat trousers and matching half-jacket with a furred collar. The thin, pointed face with intense dark eyes seems oddly younger than she did in Emily’s dream, but Delilah is still quite recognizable.

            She, too, vanishes into the mist, and now Piero waits in the darkness of the tree again. It is beginning to feel like a familiar companion, and he is not convinced he wants to venture further outward. He has dithered there for some long uneventful span of time when there is a rending, wrenching noise—somehow, weirdly, not unlike the whalesong, he manages to think with the part of his brain that is not screaming in pain again—and a bright golden rent appears above the marsh. Piero catches a glimpse of torchlight, sickly glowing blue runes, and slobbering, eager faces beyond before the world shatters.

            _\--The river running across his feet, heat beneath his fingers, burning the tips even beneath the mud, boiling the water around—_

_\--His own face, half-seen through a smoky haze, and Anton, younger, hair still jet black, staggering against him—_

_\--a coin that revolves over and over, spinning between possible outcomes in midair, never landing, simply spinning faster and faster until it has become a blur—_

_\--Emily’s eyes, blank above a blue kerchief hiding the lower half of her face, covered in dark splotches—_

_\--Anton, back arching, strapped into a metal chair, with the crackle of electricity surrounding everything--_

_\--_ and laughter, cracked and hollow, echoing in his ears. Piero is curled over himself, a desperate, quaking question mark. When he looks up, he sees that the marsh has shivered itself into pieces. There is still a clump of reeds around the tree Piero is standing in front of, but a mere foot away, there is what appears to be almost a five-way mirror. A ragged line runs to infinity upward and downward, splitting reality into a number of pieces. Trying to look directly at it sends a strange fizzing sensation through the backs of his eyes, and he looks to the side instead.

The first thing he sees is himself, but this is not a reflection. This is—a tear. This is—himself, seated at the white table, sipping tea in a patterned teacup. There is no marker to tell him anything else about this scene, just the blue void, the white table, his own rather stooped shoulders. And yet—

            He needs a pen and paper. The feeling pushes him onwards even as his mind catches up with himself. Notes left to himself, in his own handwriting, that he must have left for himself, which means—it means he needs a pen and paper. He teeters on the edge of thinking too hard, and if he thinks too hard he fears his mind will shatter into pieces the way the blue space around him has. He cannot think of this here.

            Putting the lens to his eye, he searches. Rotating it no longer cycles smoothly through scenes; instead a single turn flickers him to a new scene with a painful jolt, like an electric shock to his eye. Three turns to the right brings him once again to Emily’s cabin in the _Dreadful Wale_ , empty this time of occupants, but there are several pens scattered on the desk and her journal lies open before him.

            Not knowing if there is any way that this will work, Piero takes a few steps forward. His foot bumps against the wooden boards of the _Wale_ , and he frowns, but he keeps going until he can snatch up a pen and rip a few sheets out of the back of Emily’s journal. He is about to breathe a sigh of relief and remove the lens from his eye when something stops him.

            He does not know where his feet stand now, whether the boards beneath his feet with vanish into aether once the lens is removed, and he does not know what would happen if he fell, but the idea gives him a swaying feeling of dizziness. After a moment of thinking very hard, he takes five precise steps backwards and takes the lens down again, wincing as the same strange shock runs through him.

            The tear is still before him; he can still see his own back, shoulders rising and falling slowly, even though there is no reason for him to be breathing. Perhaps it is mere habit, or perhaps a mere phantasm, as if his eyes cannot believe the sight of a living person with no motion of breath. Although if it is a case of belief, Piero feels there ought to be several moments at which his belief should have failed before now.

            Leaning against the tree, he pulls out two sheets of paper and hastily scribbles the instructions to himself that he received previously. Unfortunate that he does not still have the notes themselves to hand, but he believes he recalls what they said. If the instructions to himself are incorrect, well, presumably another timeline will split off, that is all. He hopes.             The triangle, especially, gives him trouble; he cannot recall whether it was filled in or whether it actually appeared to have been generated point by point, but in the end he decides that if he cannot remember, it cannot matter, and scrawls it the simple way. He tucks the lens into the first note and, stomach still churning unpleasantly, moves forward.

            The connection between the space he is currently occupying and the other space that he—that he _was_ occupying—that some version of himself is, definitionally, still occupying—the connection between the two spaces is a ragged oval hanging in the air. He expects another unpleasant sensation as he crosses the boundary, but he feels nothing other than a sudden shift in temperature, as if he had stepped from a dank room into a slightly warmer one. He does not have time to spend on the frustration of the fact that even his smallest speculations are incorrect, but he makes a note for future reference, which he files mentally under, _Further inconsistencies of the Void_ , and then he slips towards himself as quietly as he can.

            He places the note with its precious cargo at his own elbow, tucking it beneath the saucer seated there, wondering how he can possibly have failed to notice himself, but he does not look up, stooped still over the table, utterly absorbed in the sketch he is making. Perhaps Emily has a point when she tells him that he has been known to focus too hard.

            Once he makes it back to his tree—which he is becoming absurdly attached to at this point—he realizes he has no idea how to find the other temporal location to which he needs to deliver a note. Even if he can find another rent, is there any way that he will be able to tell whether he has reached the correct moment? Or will any moment become the correct one? His head is spinning.

            Footsteps approaching, moving swiftly and almost silently. Piero presses himself back into the tree, wondering how such an empty place has become so populated. He looks up to see Emily moving swiftly and strangely from place to place. She is holding what appears to be a strange, fan-like object, visible only in that looking through it is like looking through one of the rents, although the edges are less jagged.

            Although most of his attention is drawn by the object, he also notices that Emily seems more _real_ than most of the other objects and people he has interacted with this in this place. The light that illuminates her is harsh and bright, outlining the shadows of her form, and though those shadows flicker and seem to obey some unseen light-source, said light-source appears consistent. The folds of her clothing obey the drag of gravity, and although her footfalls are light, they leave a trace behind, here and there a crushed blade of grass or a shallow indentation in the soft earth.

            With mixed feelings, Piero watches her pause and expertly extract an object from somewhere inside the folds of her clothes, and then he has an uncomfortable shock as he recognizes the spongy red ovoid pulsating inside the skeleton of wires that send it repeated shocks to keep it beating. Emily holds it out before her and a shimmering, inchoate form blurs into existence just behind her shoulder.

            Here, with the usual coherent lucidity of his dreams, Piero recognizes it very clearly. It is the vessel he constructed for Corvo so many years ago; he wonders how it came to Emily. And then he sees Emily creep up behind someone he does not think he recognizes, slide her arm around his throat in an expert chokehold, and there is a shimmer and a shiver, and the area around him shifts again. Piero clings to the tree beside him and fights nausea, pressing his eyes close together.

            There is a note crinkling in his pocket, the paper crisp against his fingers, even though he is certain there was no such note a moment ago. A chill like icy fingers down his spine; he pulls it out and reads it. _You must warn them_. The words are scrawled large across the page; he has made no attempt to sign this note. And yet he does not understand the meaning.

            Chilled, he looks up and stares through the new rent ahead of him. Torchlight flickers on the dark waters of the quagmire, and the mud is churned up by many feet. Something glows pallid beneath the water, moving slowly, and Piero feels himself arrested, caught, unable to move.

            Someone is moving through the reeds, and then she has emerged and she is wading through the fetid water. Delilah’s face is corpse-white and oddly piscine in the half-light. She bends and draws from the water the thing bobbing beneath it, and Piero cringes. The corpse is already decaying; shreds of flesh hang from the hollows of its cheeks, and the eyeballs are yellowing, sunk back in their sockets, but blood still pours sluggishly from the wound in its throat. Delilah grabs the hair and levers the head back, propping the body against her knees. She cups one hand beneath the wound, catching the blood as it spills out, pressing with the other hand as if she is milking the injury.

            Piero was not previously aware of bodily demands in this space, but apparently it is possible for the mental experience of nausea to override any lack of true physicality. He doubles over, retching, expelling what is presumably mostly tea onto the muddy ground.

            A noise makes him look up. Delilah’s face is stained dark with blood around the mouth, and she is staring directly at him. Even as he watches, blue light seems to coil around her; the corpse in her arms spasms, and its eyes are no longer yellowish but black, nothing but obsidian pupil from lid to lid.

            Almost before he realizes it, he’s running, slipping and sliding over ground that changes beneath his feet as he moves. Whalesong reverberates in his ears, but he cannot spare the time to cover his ears, and he sobs with the pain of it as he continues to run.

            Strips of reality flash past like the striped shadows cast by a tree’s waving branches, and he finds himself automatically cataloguing the sights and sounds, despite the fact he should be concentrating on being anywhere but the place he is trying to leave.

            He sees Delilah building her castles and thrones, and then she is only a child building muddy structures on the bank of the Wrenhaven, and she and another girl shriek and run and play with one another. _Tell me a story_ , the other child begs, and he hears Delilah begin, authority in her voice, _Once there was a wise and noble Empress_ …and then they are gone, and there is a bundle of twigs rising in their place. A skull is seated in the center and the wood fans out like a pair of vast wings around it.

            Something about it is _wrong_ , and Piero flees from the feeling, his stomach rebelling again, visions of blood and floating corpses dancing before his eyes. Something wails in his ear, and he glimpses a shimmering figure rising from the construction before he wrenches himself to the next stripe.

            The water of the Glaiwes covering over his head would not have been more of a shock than hearing Delilah’s cold voice, speaking as if from a great distance, “Bring Sokolov to Jindosh, but kill Joplin. He’s too dangerous. He sees too far.” A masked figure is nodding, and Piero trips over himself and tumbles, trembling, and finds himself falling onto the familiar dark trunk of that old black tree. He sobs and curls into its base as if it were Anton, as if he were safe in Anton’s arms, safe and warm.

            It is not _fair_ , Piero thinks miserably. His is one of two of the greatest minds in the Empire, but all anyone sees when they look at him is a threat. A witch. A heretic. Channeler of the Outsider’s power, when he has made no bargain and can do nothing but _see_. What use is seeing when you cannot even carry your insights into the waking world? All he wants is to be left alone.

            And yet…even if he _were_ blind to the space outside of space, the time outside of time—would that be enough? Would not his intelligence alone be enough of a double-edged sword to bring danger down upon him? _Bring Sokolov to Jindosh_. Piero sobs again, anger and fear warring inside him. _Anton is mine_ , he wants to shout, with a sudden, primal surge of possessiveness. _He is mine, and you have no right to try to take him from me._

            Whalesong again. Piero looks up to see another one of the behemoths stroking through the aether above him. Shuddering, this time he forces himself upright and stares after it as the flukes move. “Fuck you,” he chokes through numb lips, thinking wretchedly that Anton would be proud. “And fuck you as well,” he says in the direction he thinks he came from. “I will not let you win.”

            He straightens himself, though he keeps one hand on the oddly reassuring bark of the dark tree. He still has several notes to deliver, along with a warning. It’s no longer clear how much of what he has seen has already happened and how much he can avert—but by the Void, he is going to do his best.

~

            The moon had risen high enough to shine into the greenhouse; Anton groaned and blinked up at it. How long had it been since he last slept? Rubbing grit out of his eyes, he stared down at the four little vials of crimson liquid in front of him. A good thing he was the Royal Physician; an even better thing that he kept meticulous records, because this would have been impossible otherwise.

            Each vial of blood was labeled with the name of its owner along with the date of acquisition. _Emily Kaldwin_ , _2/3/1837_. _Jessamine Kaldin, 2/4/1837._ _Corvo Attano, 3/1/1837._ _Anton Sokolov, ~~4/~~._ He had stricken through the final date, because the sample was going to be used up at the end of the night anyway. It would be more optimal, he thought clinically, if he had an extra vial or two, in case of contamination, but that was not the case. He would have to work with what he had.

            Moving slowly and carefully, he set out eight test-tubes and labeled each one of them on small squares of paper he affixed with dots of sticky gum. Four of the tubes received a small _A_ , four a small _B_. His hand trembled so violently on the last one that it came out looking more like an _R_. “Outsider’s balls,” he muttered, pausing to roll his rapidly-stiffening left shoulder. He couldn’t afford a spasm that violent while trying to perform a delicate experiment.

            Running a frustrated hand through his hair, he briefly abandoned the lab table to cross the room and fetch the bottle of foul-smelling liquid he had left near the door on a table neatly marked, _Food and drink only_. Putting together a cocktail that would keep him awake without causing his hands to shake had been an exercise in frustration and an extremely interrupted set of sleep patterns for a week or two, and he still hadn’t solved the taste problem, but that was the least of his worries right now.

            Pinching his nose got three swallows of it down, which was about all he should probably be taking right now, particularly if he wanted to snatch a few hours of sleep in the early hours of the morning before he needed to be up to check on the progression of the plague in his current crop of subjects.

            He waited several minutes until he felt clear lucidity settle into his mind, pushing aside the sleepiness lurking to engulf him, though it did little for the actual exhaustion, and then he pressed a pen against a clean sheet of paper to test the steadiness of his hands. When he was satisfied that he could trust himself to perform as well as necessary, he returned to the eight test-tubes and their accompanying vials.

            Earlier in the evening, he had already retrieved the necessary reagents and set them out in the work-space. Now he opened them, filling the _A_ vials a third of the way with the contents of the first, and the _B_ vials a third of the way with the contents of the second. After a moment’s thought, he paused and neatly wrote in the initials of the subject below the _A_ and _B_ notations. Now he had eight test tubes, each with a unique label: _A/JK, B/JK, A/CA, B/CA, A/AS, B/AS, A/EK, B/EK._

Taking a deep breath, he reached for the first of four pipettes he had also set out with care in a wooden holder so that there was no chance of cross-contamination. So. Jessamine first. The reaction was somewhat variable, but prior experiment suggested five drops would be more than enough to see any that existed. Carefully, he withdrew a full pipette from the _Jessamine Kaldwin_ vial and held his breath as he counted droplets— _one, two, three, four, five_ into the _A/JK_ test tube and then _one, two, three, four, five_ into the _B/JK_ one. He tossed the used pipette into a glass pitcher he kept nearby for the purpose of storing laboratory equipment in need of cleaning that was not contaminated by plague or explosives.

            Retrieving a fresh pipette, he performed the same sequence of steps for _Corvo Attano_ , _Anton Sokolov_ , and _Emily Kaldwin_. Then he took out a nearby notebook as he waited, opened to a fresh page, dated it, and drew a careful chart:

_ Test _ | _ A  _ | _ B _

_JK_     

_CA_

_AS_

_EK_

            _CA_ was actually the first to react; perhaps Anton had used slightly larger droplets in that test-tube. Either way, clotting became rapidly evident in the _CA/A_ tube, and Anton dutifully updated the chart:

_ Test _ | _ A  _ | _ B _

_JK_     

_CA      R_

_AS_

_EK_

            _JK/A_ reacted soon after that; then _AS/B_. No sign of a reaction in _CA/B_ or _JK/B_. He updated the chart:

_ Test _ | _ A  _ | _B _

_JK_       _R    -_

_CA    R    -_

_AS_ _\-    R_

_EK_

He stared at _EK_. If _EK/A_ reacted, he had the answer he needed. If there was no reaction, he had no answer. If—

            He was staring so hard at _EK/A_ that he almost missed the beginning of the reaction in _EK/B_. Nausea spiked in his stomach, sudden and sharp, as his eye was drawn to the increasing cloudiness. No, no, _no_. This was precisely the opposite of what he needed.

            Anton felt a muscle twitch in his cheek as he flipped back through the notebook, which was full of similar charts, along with lines labeling the relationships between the subjects. Since the relatively recent work of Eran, a natural philosopher native to the north of Gristol, with root vegetables, it had become evident that parental traits could be passed onto offspring in some manner, and moreover that there were certain patterns that could be used to predict the traits in the offspring. Conversely, certain combinations of traits in offspring could never be produced by certain sets of parents.

            Groaning, he flipped back through his notes on blood and heredity. No, his entire body of evidence showed that a child with type B or AB could not be produced from two parents of type A. Fuck. _Fuck_.

            Mechanically, he rose, collected the test tubes, and, after removing the labels, dropped them into the glass pitcher containing the used pipettes. Contamination no longer mattered. The labels he stuck onto the top page of the notebook, above the three-quarters completed chart. Then he used a knife to slice the page out of the notebook, and with hands that were still perfectly steady, carried it to another table, where he lit a candle and held the page above it until the center caught. He watched the dark ring moving outward ahead of the yellow flame and the wet sputtering sparks when the gum caught. Once the fire had devoured nearly the whole page, he dropped the corner onto the wet tabletop where it sputtered out, blew out the candle, and brushed the ashes off the top onto the floor. Finally, he cleared the reagents off the table where he had been performing the experiment and tucked them back in the cabinet where he stored them, and stumbled in the direction of his bed.

            Once he had carefully closed and locked the greenhouse door, he slumped against it, cradling his head in his hands. Damnation. They would pay for this, all of them: Corvo paying already, trapped in the dungeons and Anton could no longer hold onto even a sliver of hope of being able to free him; Anton himself unable to find even a single piece of information to use as leverage for himself in the current exceedingly sticky situation. Emily? Well, if the information ever did surface, it could only cause complications for her. At least Jessamine was beyond its power to harm.

            He wanted to slam his fist into the door. Information— _truth_ —in his hand. _He_ had accomplished this test, no one else, and it surely had the potential for beneficial application, but now all of that was nothing more than ash in the face of the damning truth: Corvo had not sired Emily. He had.


	6. Connectedness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jessamine and Piero discuss Anton.

_Let a connected space be a space which cannot be described as the union of two disjoint nonempty open sets. – Kirin Jindosh, Various Mathematical Proofs on Sets and Groups_

            When Piero finally finds his way back to the little table with the tea-kettle, the charcoal, and his sketches, he is trembling but calmer. His pockets are empty of paper, and he has lost the pen he was using somewhere. It is probably in a whale’s belly by now, he thinks wryly, letting himself fall into the waiting chair as he imagines the confusion on some whaler’s face as they unearth a probably nonfunctional writing implement from somewhere inside the gut of one of their slaughtered leviathans.

            With a shuddering sigh, he seats himself in front of the white table, burying his face in his hands. He has done all that he can, and the magnitude of the recent events are large enough, confusing enough, that he cannot wholly grasp the shape of them yet. But from the fragments he has gathered, from the conclusions he has drawn, from the visions he has seen, one thing is clear. Emily requires his aid.

            After taking another few deep breaths, he reaches for his charcoal and begins to outline a lopsided shape on the page in front of him. It is a familiar kind of work, easy for him to become absorbed in, and it’s calming to watch the sketch grow in front of him. This, at least, he understands. He can feel the idea growing in concert with the smudged lines, drawing him inevitably toward the concept waiting for him, the one that he needs to help Emily—to help all of them.

            At some point, he becomes aware that he has a visitor. He is not certain how long she has been watching him before he feels the prickle of her surveillance.

            “Would you like some tea?” he asks eventually, as she leans over his shoulder, inspecting the swooping lines of his sketch.

            A soft intake of breath suggests that she is surprised he noticed her, but Piero has never been adept at reading the motions of others, so he distrusts the assumption. In either event, she responds quickly, though her voice is monotonous, “Thank you.”

            “Have a seat.”

            After a moment, she does, and he finally looks up. A young woman with dark hair drawn back from her face, aquiline features, and large, dark eyes. She looks very like Emily. It is a face he has not seen in over a decade, and then primarily on coinage. Piero’s hair is shot with grey and thinning, but Jessamine Kaldwin’s is thick and dark still, unchanged.

            Quirking an eyebrow at his surprise, she takes a cup of tea and sips it. The steam wafts from the top of the cup, then floats to the side and sinks, spreading in complicated curlicues about the former Empress’s hand. Piero glimpses figures in the white whorls, but they vanish when he tries to focus on them.

            “What are you building, philosopher?” she asks him coldly, gesturing with a finger at the papers spread across the table.

            He frowns and blinks. Somehow, he would have expected a more difficult question from his long-dead monarch. “I am modifying a design,” he explains. “Increasing its capacity.”

            “What is the original?”

            “A vessel,” Piero responds. “A vessel to hold a, a, a soul.”

            “My soul.”

            “I do not know, I have not seen it since—” But he does know. He has known since he held a still-beating heart in his hands, half-awake through a blue haze, without the ability to wonder where it came from. Blood stained his hands red, but when he woke properly, his hands were clean. The heart was gone. His vial of nerve tonic mocked him with its emptiness, and he felt raw, turned inside-out, and full of shame for an action he could not remember. “Yes.”

            “You want to allow the vessel to—what?” Her dark eyes challenge him, and he swallows instinctively.

            “To be able to hold more than one soul.”

            “Why?”

            “Because in order for Delilah Copperspoon to be killed, her soul must first be retrieved so that it may be restored to her, I believe.” Assuming that he has, indeed, correctly interpreted the fragments and pieces he was able to find in this strange mode of existence. He is relatively certain of himself, however. He feels the shape of the little black tree in the back of his mind.

            Jessamine stirs her tea, her tiny silver spoon scraping softly along its scalloped edge. “The vessel in question can already house one soul,” she points out. “Why modify it?”

            Piero frowns at her. “If I do not modify it, your soul will no longer have an anchor,” he points out.

            “And?”

            “And, in the mostly like case, it will dissolve into the Void.” Surely she knows this. Piero is aware that he is more intelligent than the average man or woman, but this seems relatively self-evident.

            Jessamine looks up, dark eyes catching his, dark brows furrowing together in a way that reminds him, oddly, of Anton, a kind of angry stubbornness lurking there. “And if that is what I want?”

            “Why would you want that?”

            “It would be very peaceful.” Jessamine’s form shimmers like water. “No more struggle.”

            “Why would you wish to leave Emily to fend for herself?” It is true, that from what little Piero has been able to glean of Emily from his odd vantage point here that she is fighting tooth and nail, that she will not stop fighting unless she is cut down, but it seems cruel to take more from her when she has so little left already. Piero would not do it. Of course, he is not Emily’s true parent; he has tried to treat her as he might a child of his own, but he knows that his own ideas on the subject are likely peculiar. People do seem to value independence in children, but Emily is independent enough already, and things have been hard enough for her as it is.

            “What would you know of what it is like to spend years fluttering at the edges of your loved one’s perception? With no more substance than a shadow? I have suffered in ways you could not comprehend, philosopher. Less than a day after I bled to death in the arms of the father of my child, I was summoned and bound to my own restless heart. I have lurked on the edges of perception, half-forgotten, for an eternity. How _dare_ you presume to question me?”

            Her eyes slide to the side slightly, one nail tapping an arrhythmic pattern against the teacup. Piero pushes his glasses up his nose. There is something here that does not fit, a puzzle piece tantalizingly reshaped to be slotted into the wrong spot. Despite his impulse to shrink from her righteous anger, he forces himself to examine her reaction dispassionately. His eyes narrow. “You are trying to distract me.”

            “What?” She does not seem to have been expecting his response.

            “You are trying to make me feel guilty so that I will stop asking you questions you do not want to answer. Anton does it often.”

            Even after many years of observing Anton, Piero is still somewhat poor at gauging most people’s reactions, but he is fairly certain that the minute widening of Jessamine’s eyes bespeaks surprise. “What do you know of Anton?” she asks.

            What possible answer can there be? “Everything,” Piero says quietly after a moment.

            “Everything?” Jessamine echoes.

            Piero takes a deep breath. “He has a birthmark in the shape of a retort flask beneath his transpyloric plane, a propensity to tell people that he is ten years older than would be indicated by his date of birth, a childhood weakness of the lungs, an unfortunate tendency to enjoy strong and particularly ill-flavored liquors. He makes a very short, high-pitched noise if you insert an object into his—oh—” He pauses; this might not be the most appropriate line of conversation to be having with a woman, even if she is dead and therefore presumably somewhat beyond the desires of the flesh.

            But when he looks up, Jessamine is laughing. “By the Void, he does. That birthmark is a work of art. Do you know if you just trace over the tip of his ear with your finger—”

            “It is the only thing with a semi-reliable rate of causing him to cease speaking, yes.”

            They smile at one another. “I once saw someone try to challenge Anton to a duel,” Jessamine tells him. “He said, ‘fuck off, I’m trying to sketch this sparrow,’ and when the man persisted and the sparrow flew off, Anton informed him that if he weren’t about to be too busy chasing a sparrow halfway across the city, he would happily duel with him just to teach him to keep his mouth shut when other people were working.”

            “What was the duel over?”

            “I have absolutely no idea. I’m not sure that Anton did either.”

            Piero’s smile feels a little tight for some reason; there’s something prickling behind his eyes. “His whole shoulder is scarred, but he will not let you see that it pains him. Nor does he ever let it slow him down.”

            “Scarred?” Jessamine echoes. “It was never scarred when I saw it—” Her mouth opens, then closes, and the teacup rattles in its saucer. “Pandyssia?”

            Piero gives her a small, jerky little nod. “He is a fool,” he says fiercely. “He continues fighting even when there is no possible way he can win. He would drag the Outsider down from his throne of stars and bone and force him to answer for the state of the world.”

            The former Empress seems to shrink slightly in her chair. “Would he now,” she murmurs. “Corvo would as well, I think.” There is a soft fondness on her face there. “He would do anything for Emily. I saw him refuse death and claw his way back out of hell itself only to emerge stinking and dripping on the other side. And he did save her.”

            “Yes,” Piero agrees. He looks down at his cup of tea, at the plans in front of him. An idea itches in the back of his brain. Several years ago, he and Anton delivered a child to one of Emily’s serving maids, who had been in severe difficulties. From the size of her swollen belly, they suspected twins, but had only been able to discern a single heartbeat. The mystery was solved following a long and arduous labor, which required Piero to prepare no small quantity of stimulants. The child—or children?—that the serving maid bore had two heads and two sets of legs, but the four legs split outwards from a single torso. They were not been able to keep it alive for more than a few days, but the maid survived.

            Rumors floating through the palace primarily blamed witches and black magic—with a fair few naming Anton the father, which caused Emily to fly into a rage and very nearly dismiss half the serving staff—but when Anton and Piero performed an autopsy, they found nothing that would indicate the interference of Void or Outsider. Instead, it seemed related to the rare phenomena sometimes observed of double-headed animals, the likely mechanism of which seemed to be a failure for a twin-yolked egg to fully separate.

            But the child did not die immediately, and its heads did not act in tandem. In fact, they behaved much as a pair of children would, their cries not identical in nature and not always provoked by the same stimulus. One heart pumped blood for two souls. Sisters’ souls. If he can build _that_ into this—

            “How _do_ you know so much about Anton?”

            “Hm?” Within the dream, within the blue of the Void, it is much easier to work from sheer inspiration. Things feel as they are; they follow patterns that make sense on an intuitive level, and yet, he can feel his brain working, sparking, putting data together in much the same way it does during his waking hours. His charcoal flies across the paper in front of him. “Oh. We are married.”

            There is a choking noise from across the table. Odd, as he has already remarked on the fact that air does not seem to be a particular requirement in this mode of existence. But Jessamine is certainly coughing and spitting tea back into her cup. “M-Married?” she repeats incredulously.

            “I do not know if it is officially recognized in Dunwall,” Piero says absently, following the lines of the curve with care. “The ceremony performed was—ah—T-Tyvian in origin.”

            “Can you just—say that again? Anton Sokolov is _married_?”

            “Well, it s-seemed like the appropriate next step.” Symmetry. What he needs is symmetry; the ability to hold two different states simultaneously. If a ball is poised between two bowls, any disturbance in its position will cause it to roll into one or the other. But if he can trick the universe into not— _knowing_ —which state the device is being pushed into, then perhaps it can hold both states at once. He is dimly aware that he is grasping for a single sliver of understanding, that this idea cannot encompass the whole theory of it, but out here, outside of space and time, this sliver is all he needs to be able to craft what he’s attempting.   The design takes shape beneath his hands.

            “You must be…a remarkable man,” Jessamine tells him.

            “Anton calls me strange,” Piero assents absently. The final lines fall into place. “He is rather strange himself, I suppose. There.” He turns the sketch around and pushes it across the table towards Jessamine, who freezes. Her hands begin to twine slowly around each other.

            “You finished it,” she says slowly.

            “Yes. I suppose you could still stop me from delivering it to Emily. To be honest, I am not sure h-how I can deliver it to her, though I will try.”

            Jessamine sits back, drawing her knees up onto the chair and pulling them into her chest. It is a position that Piero has actually seen Emily adopt on occasion, when she was particularly cold or scared. He wonders if she recalls seeing her mother like this.

            “I don’t suppose you’d believe that I _really_ want to sacrifice myself heroically for a good cause?” she asks.

            “I must admit that I find it unlikely,” Piero tells her.

            Jessamine puts her chin on her knees. “I can’t face her,” she says bluntly, and this time, her words have the ring of truth, but Piero is not certain he understands them.

            “Emily?” he asks, in confusion.

            “Delilah.” Jessamine runs a hand through her hair. “My sister,” she continues in a subdued, hushed voice. “I’ve…I’ve wronged her.”

            Piero thinks of the crying little girl, shaking her head in denial of the crime as the child version of Jessamine points at her, white-faced and thin-lipped. “Yes,” he agrees. “It is something that people do. They are unkind because they are afraid. I have seen it often.” _Piero Joplin, charged with conduct unbecoming a member of the Academy, is hereby stripped of his rank of underclassman and expelled…_

_If you kill Joplin, you can keep Sokolov alive. Joplin won’t beg; he’d rather die than give up his pride…_

“I have been wronged,” he says jerkily. “Over and over again until at times it seemed as if the world could never atone, that all there was left for me was burning in the fires of vengeance or drowning in the oblivion at the bottom of a bottle of one of my own concoctions.” He shivers, looking down at his hands, fiddles with the ornate ring on the third finger of his right, a little worn now, the twin interlocking squares glimmering in the blue light. “And I have wronged others.” _Callista’s disgusted face, profile lit by candlelight as she turns pointedly away from him._ “Sometimes without the excuse of fear. And, ah, I think that Delilah has wronged you, too.”

            “Not without cause,” Jessamine responds softly.

            “Is it cause to mete out death for a thoughtless harm? If—if I had done as she did, I, I, I would be dead myself now. The world would have turned to dust for me, and I would always have wondered wh-why the thought of leaving him to choke on poisonous smoke still hurt so much, when it was no more than he deserved.” He looks up now, hardly daring to meet her eyes. “If I h-h-had let Anton die then, wh-what would you think of me now?”

            “I would hate you,” Jessamine responds immediately.

            “I would, too,” Piero replies honestly. “But I thought it no more than he deserved for what he did to me.” He sighs. “P-People are complex, and I do not understand them. I understand less the ideas of right and wrong as the Abbey portrays them or even as others do. I—know only that you have both hurt each other and perhaps that there is no way to heal from that but that if y-you are anything like your daughter, then I think you must be very courageous. And if you are as courageous as Emily, then I think you must be able to face wh-what you have done. And what Delilah has done.”

            Jessamine stares at her hands, turning the teacup slowly around and around between them. “I have been running from her for so long,” she says eventually. “I thought I would always keep running, until I dissolved into nothingness. And then you had to appear.” Her eyes dart up to his. “Do you have any idea how unusual you are? Married to Anton Sokolov, now there’s something I thought I’d never hear. Touched by the Outsider, but you don’t bear his mark, do you?”

            At the slight shake of Piero’s head, she continues in an almost casual aside, “I can usually tell these days.” Her shoulders hunch inwards. “I want to scream at you _how dare you_ some more,” she says with a sad smile, “but really I also want to thank you, because you’re doing this for Emily, aren’t you?”

            “I care very deeply for Emily,” Piero finds himself saying stiffly. “I have always been aware that I would not be able to have a family of my own, but I have always tried to treat her as—” He breaks off. This may be an inappropriate conversation to be having with Emily’s mother, but Jessamine just nods seriously.

            “Thank you,” she says, and she reaches across the table and presses Piero’s hand beneath her own. “Thank you for being there when I could not be, and thank you for continuing to care for her even now, and—I will face Delilah.”

            Piero does not know how to respond, but Jessamine does not seem to expect a response, so instead, they sit with each other in silence and look out across the unchanging expanse of the Void.

~

            The painting was fighting him, Anton thought, savagely slapping color into the background. For once, he actually had the time to paint something that wasn’t a portrait, and he couldn’t seem to get it right. The blue was right, but the arc pylon still didn’t glow _brightly_ enough, and the figures standing at the base seemed like greyed-out shadows.

            “Excuse me, Anton.”

            With an explosive sigh, he ran a hand through his hair and turned to regard the young Empress. “What the fuck are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be having your chemistry lesson?”

            “Um, well, yes.” Emily toed at the ground, looking slightly abashed but not at all put-off by his language. “But…”

            “But what? I am trying— _failing_ , admittedly, failing miserably—but _trying_ to paint.” He gesticulated angrily at the canvas; drops of blue paint spattered the ground at his feet.

            “Piero is having some trouble getting down,” Emily informed him.   
            “What.”

            “We were playing hide and seek before my lesson began, and he hid on the roof, and now he’s having trouble getting down.”

            “ _Bozjemoi_ ,” Anton said limply. With a sigh, he jammed the paintbrush into one of his paint pots and got up. “All right, lead on, Empress.”

            They wound their way up to the greenhouse. Emily nodded carefully to every guard they passed, which Anton was almost certain was Corvo’s influence. The ever-serious Lord Protector. Perhaps that was a bit unfair, these days. Fatherhood suited Corvo; it always had, but it had been become more evident since the plague was cured. He smiled and laughed more often and was usually the most enthusiastic participant in the games of hide and seek that Emily still begged for. Perhaps it was the fact that at this point, it was essentially accepted fact that Corvo was Emily’s father.

            As they entered the greenhouse, a quavering voice called, “E-Emily? Wh-Where have you gone?”

            “Fuck me,” sighed Anton, pressing a hand to his forehead. “Did you not tell him where you were going?”

            “I did!” Emily exclaimed indignantly. “I called up to him! Although…perhaps he did not hear me. The wind gets quite loud up here. I didn’t think of that.”

            “Always remember to account for less than ideal conditions,” Anton instructed her absently. He crossed the greenhouse and went out onto the deck beyond. Currently, there was a large metal scaffold erected along the outer wall as part of an experiment into the properties of the propagation of currents through various different media, which was presumably how Piero had succeeded at getting up to the roof in the first place—yes, there he was, a miserable little bundle of clothing huddled against the top of the scaffolding, the collar of his oversized coat turned up against the wind.

            “Piero!” Anton called, and the other man turned questioningly, looking down. “You can come down now!”

            Piero shook his head frantically. “I w-w-would r-r-rather n-not.”

            “Fuck’s sake, man, you got up there, you can get down.”

            “It d-d-did not s-seem as high wh-when I w-was climbing _up_.”

            Anton pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers and sighed. He had two options. Either he could spend the next hour or two coaxing his lover down from the roof, or…

            “You owe me a drink!” he called to Piero. “I will accept payment in King Street Brandy or wine with a better vintage than the slop they’ve been serving us.”

            “I th-th-thought you were n-not drinking alcohol anymore?”

            “I’m going to make an exception!” He turned to Emily. “Hold my coat,” he instructed her, then paused thoughtfully. “Keep an eye on the scaffolding as well and tell me if you see it starting to buckle. I’m heavier than Piero. I don’t want us falling through.”

            “Yes, of course,” Emily said obediently. “Are you going to climb up and get him?”

            “Yes.”

            “What?” squawked Piero from overhead.

            “Oh, you can hear _that_ ,” growled Anton. “I changed my mind, I’ll be needing a King Street Brandy and a very thorough fuck later.”

            “How do two men fuck?” Emily asked interestedly from his side, and Anton cringed slightly. _That_ was going to get him in trouble with Corvo later. Judiciously, he pretended he hadn’t heard the question and put his hands on the metal in front of him. Although it was a relatively warm day, the bars had been chilled by the wind, and the cold cut into his hands immediately. All the same, the scaffolding was easy enough to climb—must be, for Piero to have been able to make it up.

            Anton paused for a moment, actually enjoying the stretch in his muscles and the feeling of wind in his hair, before he continued moving with care. It only took him a few minutes to clamber over the lip of the roof to where Piero was crouched, his head turned away from the edge. He looked back as Anton approached; his face was distinctly green even in the direct sunlight.

            “Get up,” Anton told him. “Get on my back.”

            Piero gaped at him and did not move. “I c-can’t,” he whispered.

            “You damn well can. Get on my back so we can get you down, the Empress can get back to her chemistry lesson, and _I_ can get back to my Void-cursed _painting_.”

            Gingerly, walking as if one wrong move would send him careening off the edge, Piero shuffled towards him. “I—I do not know how to—”

            “Have you never played pig-a-back? Never mind, don’t answer, I don’t want to know.” He bent over, indicating his back. “Climb on.”

            After another moment of hesitation, Piero clumsily did so. He was not terribly heavy for a man of his size—Anton had been briefly surprised at one point to realize that Piero was actually a few inches taller than he himself, but it was impossible to tell because he slouched terribly—but he was still ungainly and more weight than Anton was normally comfortable carrying.

            Anton paused for a moment, moving to resettle Piero over his shoulders. He could feel the other man’s breath coming in short, hot, nervous puffs, just above his right ear. Then he moved to the edge. “Shut your eyes,” he instructed Piero, “I don’t need you thrashing around and getting us both killed.”

            “Y-Yes.”

            After another moment’s wait to ensure that Piero had followed his instructions, Anton carefully maneuvered them out onto the scaffolding. Clumsily, he felt for the first bar below him, then the next. His muscles protested.

            He’d made it most of the way down when Emily gave a warning squeak of, “Look out!” and he felt the bar underneath him start to give way. _Fuck_. He tried to find the next bar and missed. There was a clattering noise, and then they were falling, Piero’s breathless noise of panic floating away above them.

            Fortunately, he’d gotten them most of the way down, and he landed, jarringly hard, on both feet on top of the bar that had fallen, which began to roll away beneath him. Choking out an obscenity—difficult because Piero was falling and his arms were wrapped tight around Anton’s throat—Anton managed to stagger sideways. He crashed into the wall, which hurt, but at least was a source of support. Now that he had his feet under him, the fact that Piero’s arms were cutting off his access to air was becoming a more pressing issue. Frantically, Anton tapped on Piero’s arms, unable to make a vocalization.

            “Master Joplin, you should let go,” Emily said. “You’re on the ground, and I don’t think Master Sokolov can breathe.”

            “Oh—oh dear.”

            Anton took a gulp of air as Piero let him go, bending over against the wall to steady himself and cursing as he held his side where it had impacted the wall. There was a strip of pain across the balls of his feet where they had hit the bar, and his back was protesting. After a long moment, Anton opened his eyes and leveled a glare in Piero’s direction, only to find that the other natural philosopher was regarding him with something like awe.

            “How did you _do_ that?” Piero asked.

            “I grew up clambering across mountainsides. Shepherd’s son, remember?”

            Piero seemed to absorb this, before straightening slightly, hands moving across his front in a nervous attempt to smooth his shirt and coat. “You are—it is still m-most surprising,” he managed awkwardly. “Th-Thank you.”

            “I expect payment delivered tonigh—”

            Unexpectedly, Piero leaned forward, placing his hands on Anton’s shoulders, and kissed him softly on the lips. “I—ah—very much appreciate your aid in this matter,” Piero told him. He was still trembling slightly, and Anton grumbled deep in his throat, knowing he was not going to be able to stay irritated for very long.           

            “Can I have my chemistry lesson now?” Emily asked.


	7. Ring Axioms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anton continues to battle Jindosh.

_A ring is a mathematical set with two binary operators that obeys the ring axioms. In essence, it contains a generalization of the operations of addition and multiplication. – Kirin Jindosh, Various Mathematical Proofs on Sets and Groups_

            “If I cannot change your mind, I can at least control what visions it gives you,” Jindosh’s voice murmured viciously. Electricity arced, and Anton felt darkness rising up to engulf him.

~

            The _Dreadful Wale_ rocked ever-so-slightly, and Anton looked up. There was a figure standing on the side, using a hand to brace itself in its stooped-forward position. Something about it reminded him of seeing Corvo appear through the smoke-filled haze of Piero’s workshop over a decade ago, but he knew that this was no savior. They hadn’t set sail swiftly enough.

            The hatch to below clicked open even as Anton began to rise to his feet, and Piero poked his head out. “Meagan says we that we are almost ready to set sail and wishes to know if you have anything else to—A-Anton, wh-what is wrong?”

            “Get down below.” Anton waved his hand, rising to his feet, but Piero—damn him—was coming further up, closer towards Anton himself.

            “Wh-What is going on?”

            “Don’t ask questions, just get out of here!” Anton roared. He felt the deck reverberate as the figure leapt gracefully from the side to land beside him. Piero’s eyes widened with shock, and he took another step upwards, drawing breath into his lungs to yell, one hand outstretched towards Anton in what appeared to be a warning gesture—there was a whistling noise, and then a blade sprouted in Piero’s throat.

            “ _Petja_!” Piero staggered, hands reaching towards his collar, and then he went down on his knees. Something struck Anton in the chest, and he choked as his lungs seized up, as strong, wiry hands grasped him and lifted him up. He tried to fight, but his attacker was far stronger than he was. “Let me go to him—I must go to him—” A glimpse of dark blood spilling across the deck, and then they were away, over the side and falling.

            No. This wasn’t supposed to be what goodbye looked like. In some of his darker hours, Anton had spent time considering his own death, and certainly he and Piero had teetered on the brink of death during the Loyalist uprising when Farley Havelock had come for their blood, but for years he had comforted himself with the thought that, at least, when they died, it would be like that. Together. Whether protecting their Empress, trying to save their own skins, or simply performing an experiment that turned out to have some unexpected and unfortunate side effect, when they died, they were supposed to die hands clasped, facing down the odds and telling the universe it could fuck right off.

            He’d seen Jessamine die to an assassin’s blade; he wasn’t supposed to watch the same happen to Piero. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t how the—the _story_ should go. What kind of universe did they _live_ in, where this was what a man was expected to endure? The echo of Piero’s voice in the back of his mind informed him coldly, _the universe owes you nothing but a death at the end of it._

            But this wasn’t his own death; this was worse. Worse even than the loss of Jessamine. The only thing that could come close to _this_ was the day he had walked into the lab with Esmond’s name on his lips and smelled gunpowder.

            His captor deposited him in a small boat, paying little attention to the way his breath wheezed as his body desperately fought for air. Anton paid little attention to it as well. He would as soon have the breath stopped in his lungs now, forever. He would as soon be back on the heaving deck of the _Wale_ with his own blood painting the boards black than living with the cold knowledge that he would never see Piero again, never again hear a murmured, clever answer to one of his angry rants, never again wake to warmth at his back and thin arms around his waist, never again feel those skilled, long fingers threading into his own.

            For the first time in his life, Anton felt truly old.

~

            When Anton’s consciousness reasserted itself, he realized to his horror that he was weeping.

            “Why not spare yourself the pain?” Jindosh asked, and Anton cursed him and shut his eyes. He would not remember this. By some sheer stubbornness, he tugged on the reins of his mind and turned them backwards towards happier days once more. He refused to lose this contest. He refused to lose Petja.

~

            “I have changed my mind,” Piero said in such a dismayed voice that Anton felt a sudden heart-thumping panic until he followed the other man’s gaze and saw that it was fixed on the little brazier that had been set up in the back of Kaldwin’s Bridge. “I would rather not set my backside alight.”

            “Then make sure you jump high enough,” Anton leered at him. “Setting your backside alight isn’t on the menu until later tonight.” Piero sputtered, and Anton took the opportunity to clap him on the shoulder. “Come on, man, you’ll be fine. And this was your idea in the first place, remember?”

            “Well,” muttered Piero. He managed a feeble, “only technically,” before lapsing into a confused, nervous silence. It had been a week before, the two of them working on opposite ends of the greenhouse, when Piero had looked up and commented, “should we be married?”

            Anton, in the middle of a chemical preparation of some delicacy, had nearly dropped his full flask of trans, which would have neatly answered the question as it would have eliminated both of them, the entire greenhouse, and probably two of the floors below in the ensuing explosion. Instead, he set it down with remarkable care in the holder constructed explicitly for that purpose, turned around, and gave Piero an incredulous stare. “What.”

            Piero had not even turned around from the experiment he was performing. “Only,” he said thoughtfully, mixing the preparation with a long metal rod, “we share quarters, ideas, a bed—we consider each other in the context of large scale decisions. I am not certain if I have correctly identified all the necessary ingredients, as I can hardly lay claim to any expertise in the area, but it seems to me that is what constitutes a marriage. And last week Emily was preparing for Callista’s wedding, and she asked me what kinds of gifts had been given us when we were married, so I think that most people already suppose that we are.”

            Anton opened his mouth and then shut it again. Many events had subdivided his life: meeting Esmond, meeting Jessamine, Esmond’s death, Emily’s birth—and the two nights he had spent fighting for his life with the first person _since_ Esmond that he could truly work with. That he could call a true partner. Yet Piero was more than Esmond could have been; he and Esmond had been constrained by the latter’s role as his mentor, by the dictates of society that Anton did not think Esmond would have shrugged off nearly as easily as Piero had, perhaps by something more unquantifiable that he was loathe to try to identify in words. Piero was special. There was no way to deny that.

            Besides, Anton thought, a little shakily, in some ways they had been bound by an agreement for years already, since Piero asked him with the tears still wet on his cheeks, _what am I to you_ , and Anton had answered—well, he wasn’t sure what he had answered. He’d made rather a hash of answering, in fact; he wasn’t sure if he’d even _given_ a concrete answer, but he could recall, with perfect clarity, Piero’s next statement. _I want to stay. I want that very much._

            “No, I—believe you have identified all the required aspects,” he growled. “It’s unusual for a marriage to be conducted between two men, but I don’t give a fuck and it’s not as if the gossip could really get any worse. Emily could preside easily, if she doesn’t die of shock finding out that it hasn’t been done yet. What does your schedule look like next week?”

            Once a suitable date had been chosen, Anton had surprised himself by suggesting a Tyvian-style ceremony. Piero had not seemed to have many ideas, and Anton was loathe to be married in a Gristol fashion if his partner did not greatly desire it. Still, it required more effort than simply signing a piece of paper, which Piero would probably have been equally willing to do. But Anton did miss his homeland at times, though he rarely admitted it, even to himself. The snow-covered mountains where he had lived the first sixteen years of his life had seeped into his bones, along with their rituals and superstitions.

            And now, here they were, readying to leap over a fire together for some reason that probably had to do with proving trust or appeasing the quarters or some such justification, but all Anton could think was that it felt right, for more reason than one.

            Emily stood beyond the brazier, smiling from ear to ear. In the house, Rosaline was waiting, ready to stand in place of Anton’s sister, and Piero had promised he’d managed to find someone to stand in for his, although he had been unaccountably reticent about who it was, which made Anton deeply suspicious.

            “Ready?” Emily called, shaking Anton out of his thoughts. He looked at Piero.

            “Oh, very well,” Piero said, sounding put out. “I do not know why the fire should have been built so high, though.”

            Anton clapped him on the back and nodded at Emily, who raised the little notebook Anton had given her full of clear instructions. She took a deep breath and shifted her stance unconsciously onto the balls of her feet, as if readying herself for a physical ordeal. “You come before the elements to declare your love!” she declaimed, and Anton cringed slightly. It had not really occurred to him before he heard the words shouted at the top of Emily’s enthusiastic lungs that the whole thing was almost ridiculously maudlin. “Take your first leap together to show your faith to the spirits of flame!”

            Beside him, Piero took an almost absurdly deep breath, screwing up his shoulders. Anton reached out and caught his hand, hovering for a moment to see if the other man was ready, and Piero surprised him by starting to sprint instantly. Tension caught in their joined arms, stretching them apart for a moment, before Anton launched himself forward as well, and they were running together, across the frosty, dead grass of Dunwall’s winter.

            Anton’s breath caught in his lungs, pain spiking sharp through them after only a few steps, but he kept running. They crossed the grass, approaching the brazier, and Anton leapt. He was earlier than Piero, and once again the tension caught at them, this time in the other direction. He heard Piero give a soft, nervous exclamation, and then the tension eased as Anton passed over the heat of the flames, landing hard on the ground on the other side. There was a yelp, and then Piero cannoned into him from behind. Anton turned, catching at him, and the two of them stumbled forward several steps together.           

            “I c-cannot believe you made me do that,” Piero gasped, but he was laughing. The laughter was infectious; Anton doubled over, gasping for breath and shaking with mirth, slinging an arm around Piero’s shoulder to keep himself from falling entirely.

            “A moment,” he gasped, trying to collect himself. The laughter was pleasant, but the sharp shocks of pain in his lungs less so. He coughed, tightening an arm across his chest, and Piero pressed a hand to his back. Emily hovered nervously in front of them, but Anton waved a hand at her, coughed for another moment, and spat to the side. “Fine, I’m fine,” he managed.

            Emily nodded, drawing herself up regally again. “The fire accepts your display of faith. Kneel and show your purity to the spirit of water.” Her voice had gone a little wobbly, and Anton knew she was struggling not to laugh. He found himself grinning as well. It was rather absurd, but it still felt—good.

            “Purity is rather an absurd notion,” Piero muttered, looking with dismay at the muddy ground in front of Emily. “After all, it is not as if we have not already—”

            “—fucked?” Anton supplied cheerfully, and Piero cringed slightly, glancing at Emily, who gasped out a snort of laughter before regaining her stoic face. “Oh, get into the spirit of it, man.”

            Piero made an explosive, irritated noise, but he knelt as instructed and did not give up his grasp on Anton’s hand. Emily reached down to her side and picked up the jug of milk she had set there. Carefully, a furrow appearing in her forehead, she put her thumb into the container and withdrew it to drip a few droplets of milk onto first Piero’s head, then Anton’s. The spots where it touched turned cold as the liquid evaporated in the dry winter air, and Piero shook his head like a dog trying to dry off, much to Anton’s amusement. “The water accepts your p-purity,” Emily managed, manfully fighting off the peals of laughter that were shaking her shoulders. “Rise and fuh-follow me.”

            They stopped in front of the entrance to the Kaldwin’s Bridge warehouse for a moment, where one of Emily’s guards peered curiously at them. Anton gave her one of his best scowls, and she snapped back to attention immediately. Once inside, Emily shut the door behind them and ushered them into the little foyer beyond where they had decided to perform the rest of the ceremony, reasonably far away from prying eyes. Rosaline was on one side, wearing a low-cut blue dress. She grinned and waved when she saw Anton, and then started making exaggerated kissing faces.

            Anton covered his face with his hands. “Oh, I cannot believe someone is finally making one of my favorite customers _respectable_!” Rosaline trilled happily, and he sputtered.

            “Respe—I am not—I—”

            “N-No, you are mistaken,” Piero put in at his elbow. “Anton cannot possibly be respectable. He is merely ruining _my_ reputation as well.”

            Anton opened and shut his mouth, settling on clearing his throat while Emily finally lost her battle to laughter and doubled over herself. Piero chuckled dryly at his elbow. Anton turned to the only other person in the room who was not laughing and paused immediately. “ _Bozjemoi_ , not _you_ ,” he groaned. “What are you doing here, Bentham?”

            Lillabet Bentham gave him a bland smile. She, too, was wearing a blue dress, as she had presumably been instructed in the most relevant points of the ceremony by someone, probably—“I occasionally take tea with Master Joplin,” she responded. “He requested my presence.” In irritation, Anton noted that her dress was made of a peculiar heavy silk weave marked with a vibrant wave-like pattern which he recognized as being either of Tyvian make—moths in the southern regions were well-known for such cloth—or a very clever imitation. Knowing Bentham, it was the latter. She had probably chosen it specifically to irritate him.

            Anton swung to face Piero, who gave him a rather shamefaced smile. Lillabet Bentham, the head of the Ladies’ Technical College, was an acquaintance of many years’ standing, and although Anton accorded her grudging respect for her intellect, he felt she had an almost appalling lack of care when it came to meddling with things that she did not understand. The fact that he was aware that certain people would level such accusations at himself and Piero did not make her work with the adjustable mills any less viscerally unsettling.

            “I—d-do not have s-s-so many friends in the c-city, you know. Especially w-w-women. I am not very good at speaking t-to women.”

            Groaning, Anton turned to Emily, who had finally managed to straighten up, though errant giggles were still occasionally escaping from her mouth. “Can we get on with it?” he asked a little plaintively. Emily nodded, wiping tears from her eyes and sniffing a little as she attempted to control herself.

            “Stand to show your joy to the spirits of air,” she managed, and Anton relaxed slightly. Even as he did so, Piero tensed.

            They had practiced this part for several hours the evening before, at Piero’s insistence. In fact, it was this more than leaping the fire that had originally caused Anton’s lover to balk. “I cannot _sing_ ,” he had protested, and it had taken a good several hours to persuade him that _most_ people could not sing, that if only good musicians were permitted to wed, the entirety of Tyvia would of necessity be populated with bastards.

            It had to be admitted that Piero’s singing voice was rather peculiar, reedy and thin with a tendency to crack, but he was capable of holding a tune reasonably well, which was more than could be said of a good number of people Anton had heard make it through this ceremony with a minimum of embarrassment. Most of what held him back was fear, although Anton could not deny that fear was a powerful motivator and not to be ignored.

            He shifted so that he was standing closer to Piero and started the first few notes of the song slowly; after a moment, Piero joined in and Anton increased the tempo slightly. “ _Lady of grace_ ,” they sang, a wobbly duet, “ _lady in white, bless this night. Lady of courage, lady in red, bless this bed. Lord of life, lord in grey, bless this day. Lord of death, lord in black, bless this match.”_ It was an odd translation, half-rhymes and different syllable counts giving it a somewhat offbeat feeling, but Anton had not felt it fair to make Piero try to learn something in Tyvian within the span of a week, especially when he was already so concerned about the song.

            Emily did not, thankfully, laugh at the song, and although Rosaline tittered a bit, it did not sound mean-spirited. Bentham, to her credit, remained stonefaced throughout, a perfect picture of composure. Surprisingly, she offered Piero what Anton could almost have termed an encouraging smile once the song had finished, and much as it galled him to admit it, he was grateful to her for that.

            “The air accepts your joy.” Emily stepped to the side of the little makeshift altar she and Anton had put together an hour or two ago at the end of the foyer. “Before me, show your conviction to the spirits of earth.”

            There was a loaf of bread laid on a blue cloth beneath a small potted shrub, which was the closest thing anyone had been able to find to a blackthorn tree on short notice. It had dark bark and, as Anton had discovered while he was distractedly fiddling with things on the altar earlier, long, thin spines neatly camouflaged by its leaves, so it was probably good enough.

            Piero’s hand was clearly trembling as it reached for the loaf of bread; Anton could not tell if it was relief or if he was still nervous. Maybe they should have practiced this part as well, but it was pretty straightforward from here on out. All Piero had to do was feed him. _A small child could probably manage that_ was what Anton was thinking as Piero snagged the loaf of bread, stared at it in consternation for a moment, and then thrust the entire thing into Anton’s face. It bumped softly against his nose.

            “What are you doing?” Anton asked stupidly, and Piero’s voice wafted miserably from the other side of the bread.

            “Wh-Why do you not take a b-bite?”

            “You idiot,” Anton sighed. Taking the bread, he broke off a bite-sized piece, placed it in Piero’s hand, and raised it to his lips.

            “Oh,” Piero said in a small voice. “I. Um.”

            Anton raised an eyebrow at him as he chewed. A slow flush was spreading across Piero’s cheekbones. “Here,” Anton said gruffly, breaking off another piece and raising it to Piero’s mouth in turn.

            “Yes.” Though he was still red in the face, Piero did manage to take the bread and consume it. Emily made another soft, strangled noise, but she managed to suppress anything that would have truly constituted mockery.

            “The earth accepts your conviction. Then before the blackthorn, do you both agree to this marriage?”

            And there it was, the most important moment of the whole ceremony. Piero was still flushed red, and his eyes were blinking behind his spectacles. There were crumbs of bread dusting his lower lip, and Anton wanted to reach out and brush them away. “Yes,” he said huskily, and, to his surprise, it came out clear and sincere and easy.

            “Yes,” Piero murmured, some strange emotion flickering across his face. He sounded almost awed. “V-Very much, um, so.”

            “Then before the lords and ladies, I pronounce you married. Also, you should sign this for the city records.” She indicated a sheet of paper with the crimson seal of the Empire placed at the bottom.

            “Oh, y-yes, of course,” Piero agreed, feebly, but Anton held up a finger.

            “A moment, Your Majesty,” he said.           

            “I didn’t forget anything, did I?”

            “No, you did splendidly. Thank you.”

            “Then—”

            Piero actually squawked in surprise as Anton’s hands took him firmly by the shoulders and pulled him forwards, but his cry was cut off by the sudden press of lips against his own. Anton smiled to himself, but he did not pull back. It was Piero, to his surprise, who deepened the kiss, his hands catching in the front of Anton’s shirt as if he were afraid the other might be torn away from him.

            The kiss did not feel any different from the countless ones that had come before it; Anton had known it wouldn’t. Yet there was still an absurd draw to it. For a ceremony that was in some ways merely an acknowledgment of an already-formed reality, it nonetheless made him feel oddly warm inside. “All right,” he said, finally, pulling back reluctantly. “Shall we do our civic duty, Petja?”

            Piero put an awkward elbow in his ribs. “Yes, all right, I will sign,” he said peevishly.

            “Thanks, Rosaline,” Anton grinned at her as he signed with flourish. “And thank you too, Bentham. I do hope we haven’t been too much of an inconvenience.”

            “Of course not, Anton,” she replied, coolly. “A fascinating experience.”

            He narrowed his eyes at her and passed the pen to Piero, who scribbled something that looked like nothing so much as a large, spiky _J_ surrounded by a periodic wave analysis with a number of overlapping modes.

            “Is that everything?” Piero asked. “I have a number of experiments that I should check on.”

            “For now.” Anton grinned roguishly at him. “There is still the tradition of the wedding night.”

            Piero sputtered; Emily started laughing again.

~

            Anton’s bedroom at the Kaldwin’s Bridge laboratory had undergone its fair share of changes over the years. A variety of curious objects that Anton and Piero had picked up over the years had collected in corners and on shelves: a thin, fluted piece of glassware with a swirl of bright color around the base that Anton had acquired on a trip to Karnaca; what appeared to be a jeweled pistol that, if fired, snapped open to reveal a tiny clockwork bird that cocked its head to one side and trilled out a little song; a small collection of Glaiwes pottery, which both of them had taken to seeking out, Piero out of nostalgia, Anton out of affection. A number of bookshelves had sprouted up out of the necessity of having somewhere to store a variety of notebooks on disparate topics as well as the occasional light novel. _The Young Prince of Tyvia_ generally spent its days wedged sideways across the back of the one furthest from the bed.

            The largest changes were threefold: rug, bed, heater. A second carpet, covering the other half of the room, had been put down after Piero forgot to wear socks and put his ice-cold feet onto Anton’s back once too often. The bed, of course, had been the first change. It simply was not practical for two men to share a cot of the size Anton had originally procured, even if the amount of overlapping sleep they got varied wildly by the day. And a small heater, just a single pipe of boiling water diverted from the laboratory, had been added for much the same reason as the carpet—Anton caught Piero shivering and blue with cold one morning after spending the night attempting to work out a new formulation sprawled on the floor in an attempt not to wake Anton.

            It was a chill day, and, after the wedding ceremony outdoors and in the drafty foyer, after several more hours spent pacing outside the greenhouse laboratory because he was trying to make headway on a particularly recalcitrant theory, Anton was almost guiltily glad for the warmth of the pipes. Wincing, he stretched his stiff shoulder, rolling it and sighing with relief as the heat relaxed it.

            “Some of the Watch are exchanging money.” Piero sounded puzzled.

            Anton barked out a laugh. “Even the ones who were in denial about us fucking can’t really put up a fight over it now, and I’m sure there were bets over whether we’d had a secret wedding yet or not.”

            “It is not any of their business!” Piero snapped crossly, before crossing to the bed and sinking down on it. “I only hope they will keep their noses out of our quarters this evening.”

            “I doubt they’d go that far.” He considered this. “Unless someone has a bet about relative positions, maybe.”

            “R-Relative…?”

            “Who’s fucking whom. Here.” Piero, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, had caught a sleeve in the buttonhole at his neck. Anton freed it with a twist, then, at Piero’s apparently still confused look, lifted his third finger and inserted it into a circle made by his other hand. “Who’s penetrating.”

            “B-But—it is not consistent,” Piero objected.

            “That has probably not crossed their minds as a possibility.”

            Piero made an infuriated noise. “A perfectly serviceable option,” he muttered, divesting himself of his trousers.

            “Well, don’t tell them that we rarely have penetrative intercourse at all,” Anton said affably, pulling off his own shirt with a grunt. “It would probably cause them all to bleed from the eyes, and Corvo would be upset at having to replace so many soldiers.”

            In fact, the most common scenario was for Piero to fellate or simply manually stimulate Anton to climax before they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Anton suspected it was a less unusual arrangement than it seemed, but it was understandably difficult to gather data on the subject. Rosaline and the other Golden Cat girls might be willing to speak, but such a sample would be rather biased.

            Tonight it was Piero who took the lead, urging Anton backwards and kissing him almost as if he were trying to prove something to any hypothetical observers. They fell to the bed before Anton had even finished getting his clothes off. “Ah—Petja—” he groaned as Piero slid a hand between them and grasped his erection firmly. He rocked back against the sudden, exquisite pressure, slipping a hand around Piero’s waist to hold him close. “Slow,” he murmured. “For once, let’s be slow.”

            Piero paused, eyebrows going up. “I have rarely seen you show such restraint,” he commented. Anton bucked his hips lazily, and his husband huffed out a sudden breath, eyes rolling shut. “ _Ah_ — _Tosha_ —”

            So rare to hear that. They did not often use the Tyvian diminutives of one another’s names. Piero, in particular, to whom it was a more foreign notion, rarely thought of it. Anton hummed gratefully and reached toward the bedside table, where a small bottle of slick liquid was kept. It was cold on his hand and his prick, and Piero made a soft whining noise as it was applied to his in turn, but it was difficult to tell if the sound was a protest or a supplication. Anton took both of them in hand, pressed them together, and began to stroke lightly, slowly, up and down. It was difficult enough to get Piero desirous, more difficult than that to keep him from climaxing within moments.

            “M-More, Anton, _please_ , I can barely feel— _nnn_ —” Piero’s hips jerked into his, and Anton’s own soft moan mingled with Piero’s. He lay back on the bed, forcing Piero to crawl after him, shut his eyes, moved his hand, slow and soft and pleasant. A tingle like electricity sparked up his spine.

            Hm. Ah. Oh. That was _it_. Damnation. Anton paused, rolling up on his elbow, and snatched a pen from the dresser with his free hand, looking around for a piece of paper, but there was nothing. Fuck. “Piero, hold still,” he instructed, because he needed to make sure that this _actually_ made the sense he thought it did inside his head.

            “Um, wh-what? Anton?”

            “It’s fine,” Anton said distractedly, scribbling the equation onto Piero’s shoulder. The original had been proposed from experiments performed by a Serkonan scientist named Durand who had seen fit to work on the theory of current motion first put forward by Anton himself, but it had been nagging at him lately that there was a missing term. He looked at the smudged equation with satisfaction. Well, it was uglier than the original, more was the pity, but yes, it did at least make sense, and it added some symmetry to the problem. A good first step.

            “Are you _drawing_ on me?” Piero asked plaintively, reminding Anton that he had been rather in the middle of things.

            “Writing, actually. I think I’ve fixed Durand’s damn circuital law.”

            “Oh!” Not Piero’s field of expertise, but Anton knew he’d heard enough about it during his own recent rants on the subject. His lover squirmed, trying to read what he had written from what could not be a terribly easy angle. “Fascinating. An extra term accounting for the change in the electrical field?”

            “I’ll think on it more tomorrow, for now I just wanted to get it down.”

            Piero made an assenting noise, then paused. “Still,” he said in his softest, most precise voice, “I do not feel that drawing on one’s companion—”

            “Writing!”

            “—marking the skin of one’s h-husband during coitus is appropriate behavior.”

            “I have more experience than you do, and I say it is perfectly appropriate behavior.”

            “ _Nothing_ you do can truly be considered appropriate behavior,” Piero retorted. “You are, after all, a Tyvian rake. Shall I quote Kallisarr to prove it?”

            “You ass,” Anton growled at him. “If you’re fucking me—”

            “As I’ve often said, you have entirely ruined my reputation.”

            “As if you had a reputation to ruin.” Eight years ago, such a statement might have elicited a quiet, hurt stare, but now Piero merely raised an eyebrow and snatched the pen out of Anton’s hand.

            “I was a perfectly respectable natural philosopher before I was _c-corrupted_ ,” he returned mildly, before applying the writing implement to Anton’s belly. The feather-light touch tickled abominably, and Anton shouted but could do little to escape with Piero’s full weight bearing down on his hips and groin.

            “Gah,” he complained crossly in between laughter. “Piero, stop, I didn’t tickle you, _shit_ —fuck— _ack_ —” His head spun with the sensations, half-arousing and half—distinctly _not_. “You are confusing my poor prick, stop it!”

            “There,” Piero said with some satisfaction, rolling to the side and tapping the pen against Anton’s ribs. “I think this distillation will do nicely.” He had drawn, instead of a set of formulae, crude outlines of several different plant leaves and added one or two illegible speculations that were probably notes on the process itself or possibly on expected intermediate reactions.

            Anton took the pen back, looking speculatively down at the bare expanse of Piero’s thigh. “Do _not_ —” Piero started, but before he could get away, Anton pounced. The two of them wrestled on the bed, but Anton had the better position now and he was significantly more sturdily built than Piero. The tussle ended with Piero shoving at him helplessly while Anton lay lengthwise across him and carefully inked a picture of a kingsparrow across his gracilis. By the time he had completed the slightly-smudged masterpiece, they were both breathless, covered in sweat and lubricant, and achingly hard.

            “You b-bastard,” Piero managed to gasp out, which was definitely a turn of phrase he had picked up from Anton at some point.

            “Nonsense.” Anton rutted against him, and they both gasped. “Mother and—father—both respectably married.”

            “Both Tyvian. Hardly respectable— _Anton_ —”

            Anton kissed him, felt Piero’s hands against his back, and groaned as he reached between them and pressed their pricks together once again, finally. Piero made a high noise and miraculously did not climax, but he did jerk his hips against Anton’s until Anton’s eyes rolled back in his head. “ _Bozjemoi_ ,” he spat out, and then found himself following the exclamation with a long string of liquid Tyvian syllables.

            He did not know how long he spoke for, the time measured not in ticks of the clock but in heartbeats and sighs and breaths. It might have been anything from a few seconds to a quarter of an hour before he felt the orgasm sweeping over him, and he caught at Piero as if he were drowning, burying his face in the junction of his husband’s shoulder and neck. His jerky, desperate motions must have been enough to tip Piero over the edge as well, because the other man’s ragged cry vibrated through him, nails digging into his back.

            “Ah—the, the, the feeling is mutual,” Piero murmured against his shoulder as they sank down onto the bed together.

            “You…do not speak Tyvian.” Anton raised an eyebrow at him.

            Piero smiled. “I understand obscenities and declarations of l-love. That is, admittedly, the limit of my comprehension.”

            Anton found he did not have a verbal response for that, and he was forced to turn and brush Piero’s hair out of his eyes. “Have you taken your tonic?” he asked at length. An absurd response to the confession Piero had just imparted to him, and Piero’s eyes blinked in startlement, but then softened.

            “Um, no, I had forgotten. Thank you.”

            “It’s a fucking nuisance when I have to tie you to the bed to make sure you don’t hurt yourself,” Anton growled, but he was aware the response lacked conviction.

            “Ah, yes, of course.” Piero slid to the side so that he could reach the bottle of dull green nerve tonic he took nightly, uncapping it and downing a generous swallow. If only it were less of a stopgap measure, Anton thought soberly. He was not happy with the kinds of things that Piero willingly put into his body, but unlike his own mostly dormant alcohol dependency, Piero had little choice if he did not want to take serious risks with his health in other ways.

            He became aware that Piero was craning his neck around in a way that seemed to indicate he was attempting to inspect Anton’s back, which was stinging slightly. He had chalked up the sensation to the application of Piero’s nails, but he was no longer certain. “Why are you trying to see my back?” he asked suspiciously, and Piero flushed and smiled and held up the uncapped pen. “ _You_ ,” Anton growled.

            “I thought to measure the frequency of our c-coupling?”

            “The _frequency_?”

            “As one might measure the vibrations of the earth during a seismic event!”

            Anton had to laugh and groan, and then he had pinned Piero back to the bed, a solid weight beneath him. “I am going to draw on you _all night_ ,” he said.

            “Oh, very well,” Piero smiled. “An unorthodox wedding night, certainly, but I cannot expect much more from such a Tyvian scoundrel, now can I?”

            “You are going to be a _work of art_.”

            Piero wriggled in an attempt to spreadeagle himself across the bed. “I imagine that, if correctly dried and treated, one could make a canvas of the human skin.”

            “Let’s skip that step,” Anton said dryly. “Now what shall I start with?”

            Piero blinked myopically up at him, an unusually calm grin on his face. “Whatever you like,” he murmured, and Anton found that he needed to kiss him before doing anything else at all.

~

            Anton surfaced slowly, with an unutterable weariness, from the final memory. His head was ringing, and liquid was trickling from his nose. He tasted copper on his tongue.

            “Your name?” Jindosh’s voice asked, and Anton groaned.

            “Still Anton Sokolov, still not going to help you. I think if you put me through that again I will solve your dilemma by dying for you, not that I would necessarily object to that.”

            Jindosh clucked his tongue in anger. “I see further adjustments are required. I hope you will take the evening to paint and reflect on the futility of your continued stubbornness.”

            Anton spat at him. “ _Yob tvoyu mat_ ,” he snarled, stripped bare by the final memory, no longer able to play this sick game, although he knew it was likely he would avail himself of the paints. He thought he would go mad if he did not, pacing his cell with nothing to distract him from the ugly truth of his situation.

            Jindosh waved pleasantly as the guards frogmarched out of the room. “Beat him lightly,” he instructed, and Anton closed his eyes briefly, but long enough for Jindosh’s face to disappear from his field of view by the time he opened them again. By now, he knew the corridor as well as he had known the corridors on the _Dreadful Wale_ , which was not a comforting thought. The human mind was so woefully quick to adapt. How soon would it be before he could no longer bring Piero’s face to mind? Perhaps he could do a painting, but he did not particularly want to create Piero’s likeness where Jindosh could access it.

            As they reached his cell again, one of the guards instructed the other to hold Anton still, and he tried to loosen his muscles. This promised to be particularly unpleasant. All of them had seen the angry cords of muscle standing out in Jindosh’s neck as he instructed the guards, no matter how lighthearted his tone, and Anton was not sanguine that this particular beating would be terribly light.

            He hissed as the first guard twisted his arm behind his back, the scar tissue over the old injury contracting painfully. “Fuck all of you,” he managed, though his voice came out rasping and quiet.

            The guard backhanded him, and Anton’s head snapped to the side, his ears ringing. “Can’t you hit harder than that?” he slurred. His voice was liquid in his ears, vowels shortening as his native accent surfaced. Some part of him wondered what the fuck he thought he was doing, and another part was already back in a smoke-filled room in Dunwall, feverishly licking his lips as he tried to process what he’d just said to Havelock. Freedom to choose death was still freedom, after all.

            The next set of blows was lower. Anton grunted as the air was forced out of his lungs, and he gasped in pain as he heard something that sounded suspiciously like a snap. Agony lanced through his chest. Jindosh would not be happy about that, since in his current condition, it made pneumonia nearly inevitable. It was not the worst death, he thought detachedly, but it was a relatively certain one without significantly improved medical care over what he was currently receiving. Good. He definitely wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting Piero’s face, then.

            The pain was still not good, though. They weren’t done with him yet, and Anton’s teeth clicked together with the next blow, snagging his tongue between them. He yelped and tasted copper; even drawing in the breath to make the noise was painful. By the Void, what was it about his ribs? The only time he had been in a sustained, life-threatening situation that they had not been injured had been Pandyssia, and the shoulder more than made up for that. The shoulder that currently felt as if it was being torn off.

            He tried to chant formulae in his head, tried to work out the square root of ninety-two-thousand, but it all dissolved in the face of the overwhelming pain, until he was reduced to gasping out a desperate plea for it to _stop_ at first, and when that elicited nothing, when he felt himself slipping further into the grey haze behind his eyes, he called for Piero, and then for Jessamine. A final shock of pain in his cheek, the desperate, sudden, angry thought, _But I do not_ want _to die_ , like a child’s protestation against eating his vegetables and with as much power to change his circumstances, and then the grey fog closed over his head, and he was drowning in it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lillabet Bentham is Rastaban's character from The Natural Philosopher and the Nonlinear Terms (which is referenced several times in this chapter, though as usual it's not actually necessary to have read it to understand what's going on). The cloth she is wearing is inspired by Atlas silk from the Uzbekistan region.


	8. Deviation from Predicted Response

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emily arrives, and Anton makes a choice.

_Despite careful tuning, I have as yet been unable to account for all possible variables in certain of the behaviors of my clockwork soldiers. True, such deviations thus far have been trivial, but I cannot help but desire to do better. – Kirin Jindosh, personal notebook_

            When he blinked his eyes open, his first thought was sour surprise that he wasn’t dead yet. His second was a sort of calm, resigned despair. His third was the sight of the concerned face bending over him. He gasped for breath as though he had not been breathing, winced as the dull ache in his ribs blossomed into sharp pain, and squinted. Jessamine? No. “Emily?” he rasped in confusion. She seemed like a relic from another era, bending over him with a dark scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face, a wisp of dark hair falling over her eyes.

            “Anton,” she breathed. “Oh, thank the Void you’re alive.”

            “What are you doing here? No, never mind that, where’s Jindosh? He must be stopped. He’s working with the Crown-killer, building an army of clockwork soldiers. And I believe Delilah Copperspoon is involved—”

            “She is,” Emily said curtly. “Come on, I have to get you out of here.”

            “You must stop Jindosh,” Anton told her weakly. “Never mind about me.”

            “Fuck that,” Emily told him. “I can do both. I am the Empress Emilia.” He had never heard her voice sound so hollow and ancient and yet so certain, as if the blood of Emperors long past sang through her veins. She slid an arm beneath his shoulders, gently easing him into a sitting position.

            “Agh,” Anton complained, ribs twingeing immediately and insistently.

            “What’s wrong?” Emily asked immediately.

            “Ribs,” he grunted. “Fuck.”

            “Damn,” Emily said. “There goes my plan of carrying you over my shoulders.”

            “I can walk,” he replied irritably, tried to stand, and was immediately assailed by a wave of sudden dizziness that gave the lie to that assertion. “Shit.”

            “Do you think you can hold on if I carry you pig-a-back?”

            Anton gave her an incredulous look. Emily was wiry and tough; she had inherited her mother’s grace and, much as he tried to avoid seeing it, a certain rangy strength that he knew would not be out of place in the steppes where he had grown up. Still, she was compact, quite a bit shorter than he was, and Anton knew that even after several weeks of living on a diet that was barely enough to keep him alive, he was still tall and reasonably sturdy. More importantly, it would likely still tug on the muscles and jerk the painful ribs.  He wrinkled his nose. Emily was clearly not to be talked out of taking him with her, and he did not think he would be able to keep silent if his ribs were jogged too badly. There was, perhaps, another option. “Did you see any clockwork soldiers on your way in?” Emily gave him a dead-eyed stare, which he took as an affirmative. “Good. Can you lure one of them over here? Actually, is there any way you can get me the blueprints and then lure one here?”

            Emily stared at him as if he’d grown another head for a moment, then a grim smile grew on her face, tilting the corners of her eyes up. “It may take me a little while, but I’ll get them for you.” She reached out and clasped his shoulder affectionately. “I—I’m—sorry,” she muttered, and he didn’t know if she was talking about Piero, or if she referred to the last time they had spoken.

            “Emily—”

            “I’ll be back.” Without another word, she looked up, reached out a hand—and became a sudden rushing dark shadow pouring itself out of the door. Anton felt a chill run down his spine, clenched his own hand against the sudden trembling of his limbs. _Like father, like daughter_. It was heartening, in a way, to see how much of Corvo there was in her. Less heartening to think of the little girl he had tutored as she grew bargaining away her life to the chill presence who haunted—had haunted—Piero’s dreams. Yes, Anton would have done many things for such a mark in his younger days, but now—now he was no longer certain. He had seen the ravages of the fevers in Piero, had brought him back countless times from an emptiness that threatened to consume him—and none of it meant anything now anyway. Anton hid his face in his hands, letting the grey overtake him again.

            His bout of unconsciousness wasn’t anything like sleep; he was still exhausted when the gentle rustle of paper brought him back to himself to find that he was slumped with his face in his hands, taking breaths that were far too shallow. “I’m going to get you out of here,” Emily told him, and Anton looked up to find that she was holding the requested blueprints. A distraction. Good.

            He flipped them open, running a practiced eye over them. Jindosh had improved his techniques and insight in the years following his expulsion from the Academy. Thank the Outsider he had finally begun numbering his fucking pages. Anton did not think he could deal with the frustration right now, although, to be fair—although he had no desire to be fair to the monster who had killed Petja—Jindosh had never been the worst pupil in technical terms.

            “Can I help?” Emily asked.

            “How’s your technical theory?” Anton asked absently, then waved a hand. “Never mind, I know you’re competent enough. It keeps feeling as if it ought to be Corvo standing there.” _It keeps feeling as if I ought to have Piero breathing down my neck by now_. He bit down on the knuckle of his thumb hard enough to cut into that train of thought, squinting at the blueprints. “Were these kept carefully?”

            Emily nodded seriously. “I found them in his safe.”

            From what Anton had seen, the clockwork soldiers in the mansion were still under active development, and while they were certainly capable of functioning as capable guardians, he had noted that the algorithms did not always, in practice, behave as was presumably desired. One or two of them always seemed to be undergoing modification at any given time. Unless Jindosh was even more of an imbecile than Anton took him for, he would not want to run the risk of a bladed machine going haywire and racking up a high bodycount and an impressive amount of property damage. Which meant that there was likely some kind of override code that would allow one access to the device at the most basic level.

            Indeed, a careful perusal of the blueprints revealed an arbitrary sequence of voltage applications that, when performed, put the soldier into what was referred to as a “docile” mode, which Anton felt was a hopeful sign. “All right, you’ll need to perform this sequence of operations exactly,” he told Emily, “and we should theoretically gain control over the device. There may still be some difficulties, as a clockwork soldier carrying an old man will be somewhat visible moving through the mansion, and I presume you have not eliminated all the guards.”

            “I’ve avoided most of them.” Emily’s eyes slid to the side, and Anton did not ask the fate of the ones she had not been able to avoid. He thought of the weight of a pistol in his hand, thought of the choice to fire it or die and shook his head slightly. She idolized him too much. “But if we move through the exterior of the clockwork,” she continued, “I think we’ll be able to avoid most trouble. Jindosh seems to be, um, making a game out of this.”

            “He would.” Anton rolled his eyes in disgust. “I suppose it makes things simpler.”

            It was all business now. In fact, it was all oddly easy; even hunched over and breathing with difficulty, Anton was able to instruct Emily in the correct operation of the device. She was, as always, an apt pupil, if a little skittish and distractible, but then, she had always been distractible when he was not telling her tales of Tyvian gods and pirates. And it was, perhaps, understandable for her attention to be divided under the current circumstances.

            After his explanation, it took her about half an hour to return with one of the clockwork soldiers, as she had not been able to figure out how to direct it properly and, although she had successfully turned off its drive to kill her or raise the alarm, had had to manhandle it with much nudging back through the corridors, taking care not to be seen. Anton used the time to study the blueprints to the point that he was relatively certain he could issue at least basic commands to the soldier, a hypothesis that proved true with little difficulty, although he did come very close to smashing himself into a wall once he had successfully maneuvered himself into a seat on the creature’s interlocking, outstretched hands, and only Emily’s quick interposition of herself saved him from damaging his ribs further.

            “Thank you,” Anton said stiffly, once he had gotten the thing under control. “Let’s go.”

            Inside the inner workings of the house it was quiet. The sounds that surrounded them were inanimate—the creaking of supports, the soft whir of machinery, the occasional soft drip of a liquid leak, which Anton was forced to hope was water rather than oil. The clockwork soldier strode heavily along behind Emily, who darted from cover to cover. Anton had to admit that her night-time outings had prepared her well for this. She was no child anymore, that much was clear, and it gave him a strange sense of loss, though he could not understand why. His pain-clouded brain was hazy and still somewhat oxygen-starved. Even seated in relative comfort, he winced almost every time he drew breath.

            “There.” Emily appeared out of nowhere by his shoulder, and he jerked in surprise, hissing out an obscenity as he once again jolted his painful chest.

            “Must you!” he snapped. “Corvo is bad enough for my heart as it is.”

            A sudden silence descended, and it occurred to Anton, too late, that it was unlikely Corvo would have been easily persuaded to allow his daughter to infiltrate Jindosh’s deadly mansion by herself. He had already known something was wrong—that the Empress herself was here at all—but he had been too tired and logy to come to the obvious conclusion. “Corvo?” he asked, more quietly.

            “Delilah bespelled him,” Emily said shortly. “I have to—to stop all this somehow myself. It’s just me and Meagan. And you, now.”

            Fuck. She was holding herself strong and straight, but the slight tremor of her right hand and the crook in her arm was enough to tell Anton how much willpower she was exerting to do so. Ever since her arm had been broken during the Regenter attack when Emily was fourteen, she had a tendency to hold it tight to her side when under stress. In sympathy, Anton caught himself working his own scarred arm. Fuck, why did it have to come down to him to help save the Empire? All he wanted to do was retreat into a bottle of laudanum until he forgot the gutwrenching pain in his heart. But Emily needed him. He had failed Jessamine; he would not fail her daughter. Sleep could come later.

            “Right,” he said shortly. “I suppose if I have to save Corvo’s ass again, I’ll do it. What else is old Sokolov for?”

            Emily’s eyes brightened slightly. “I knew I could count on you,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry for—for what I said. Before. You were right.”

            “Yes, I’m always right,” he told her, with a force he definitely did not feel. “But—for what it’s worth—I know what it’s like to feel trapped.”

            Her eyes flashed with sudden understanding. “I know,” she whispered. “Yes. I—I understand.”

            They were able to reach Jindosh’s laboratory without detection, partly thanks to the explorations Emily had already carried out, partly due to the fact that Anton had an innate sense of the shape of it due to having been carted around the interior for several weeks with nothing much else to occupy his mind. From high overhead, they could look down and see Kirin himself, working quietly in the center of his laboratory. Every so often, he glanced up and around the room and took a drink of water or stretched. An eerie chill ran down Anton’s spine; the motions put him in mind of many an Academy graduate. An intelligent man—a _brilliant_ man—dedicated to his work to the point of never noticing the effects it had outside of his head.

Before he could follow the thought further, Emily hissed in through her teeth, and there was a blur of shadow traveling down through the rafters, ending behind Jindosh. Her arm crooked momentarily into that awful tight shape, and then she stilled, and drew a gun from the belt at her side. She pressed it into the back of Jindosh’s head, and even from his position in the rafters he heard the startled noise that dropped from the natural philosopher’s throat.

            “Kirin Jindosh,” Emily hissed, and then she seemed to stall, her eyes raking up towards Anton.

            He wanted Jindosh dead. He wanted to see him writhe and beg. For Petja, for Emily, even for himself. It took a moment or two to maneuver the clockwork soldier in such a way that it was capable of taking him down to the laboratory floor without serious injury, but there was fretwork on the pillars, and it was not impossible for the creature to use some of its finer manipulators to do the job. Landing, gritting his teeth, he got to his feet and tried not to hobble as he made his way across the room towards Jindosh, whose expression actually lightened as he approached.

            Emily’s finger tightened minutely on the trigger of the gun. “Anton,” she said. “Should I, or do you want to?”

            “Please,” Jindosh said, with a laugh that was slightly breathless and cut off quickly as Emily pressed the pistol a little harder against the back of his skull. “You are an intelligent man. You know that harming me would be in no one’s best interests.”

            It would work, Anton’s mind told him. All he had to do was to tell Emily to shift the pistol to Jindosh’s temple. His hand could be wrapped around it, and a reasonably convincing suicide note could be written. His signature was surely around here somewhere. It could make a difference. With Jindosh removed and doubt thrown on his perception of his own creations, it was likely that the clockwork soldier program would be scrapped; at the very least, the coalition that Jindosh was working for would see its foundations destabilized. There was a kind of symmetry about it that Anton felt was appropriate: he had once helped disguise a suicide as a murder to further the cause of the weapons manufacturers; now he would be disguising a murder as a suicide in the service of peace. “Emily—”

            _Once you start ordering people killed to get your way, everything else is mere detail._

            _You are an intelligent man. You know that harming me would be in no one’s best interests._

            From another perspective, both acts would be performed _for the future security of Dunwall._ The world seemed to swing and invert; Anton was staring down the barrel of a crossbow loaded with something glowing faintly green. The death’s head beyond it—blue eyes, gold stitching across the mouth—was eerie, but he could still clearly recall the words his own mouth had formed.

            _I can see you are an intelligent man, so you understand there will be repercussions if you should harm me._

Anton shut his eyes and swore, eloquently, in Tyvian. He could not even pretend to be doing this for Piero: Piero was dead. Nothing more could be done for him.

            “Anton?” Emily’s voice sounded bewildered, a little small.

            “Why were you expelled from the Academy, Kirin?” The question, ripped out of him, was not at all what he had intended to ask, and his vowels were liquid with Tyvian resonance.

            “Surely you know.”

            “I do not.” From his recollections, Jindosh had been dismissed several years after Piero had. Well after Esmond’s death. Well after Anton had stopped much caring, if he had ever cared for the students. “Tell me.”

            A half-shrug. “The jealousy of lesser minds.”

            And who among them would not have said the same? Perhaps Jindosh was lying, or perhaps he was mistaken, though he truly believed what he was saying, or perhaps his expulsion had been as much a travesty as Piero’s. There was no way to know, not now. Anton was hollowed out with his desire to pay back pain for pain, to force Jindosh to pay for the lives he had ended, the lives he had destroyed. But what good would it do? Piero was already dead. Piero, who had been Anton’s reason to live—ironic that he could frame it in such a manner now. Piero, who had foregone his own revenge, who had dived back into a suffocating layer of smoke for the man who had held him at crossbow point not five minutes before.

            “Don’t,” Anton choked out, and he pressed his arm against his chest. “Don’t kill him, Emily.”

            “But—but he’s a _monster_.” As a child, as far as Anton was aware, Emily had never insisted there were monsters beneath her bed, although he could only have been involved in the putting-to-bed process once or twice when Corvo was particularly busy. But there was something of that inflection in her voice now—that pure, simple insistence to have discovered an inhuman thing where it should not be. “He killed Piero! He created the clockwork soldiers that have been terrorizing people. Why shouldn’t I kill him?”

            Anton shook his head tiredly. _And why shouldn’t I kill myself?_ he thought wearily. _Because you’re needed, old man, you can’t rest just yet._ “Because—your father didn’t kill me.”

            Emily’s eyes widened in shock. “How can you possibly compare yourself to him? You used your genius to create machines to _help_ people!”

            How could she possibly still be so naïve? “Emily, have you forgotten the tallboys that patrolled the streets? The walls of light? The _arc pylons_?” He sighed, passed a hand across his face. “Clearly, something must be done about him. I’m hardly advocating letting him walk away. But we don’t have to kill him.”

            “He _tortured_ you!” Emily was white to the lips. “You—you can barely move, I—I thought he’d killed you.”

            “You didn’t kill the Regenters. They trapped you away from your father, broke your arm, nearly killed you and your best friend. Yet you didn’t order them killed, and, in return, Dunwall dubbed you a grown woman.”

            “But I _was_ a child,” Emily whispered. “I did not know what kind of pain the world could mete out.”

            “ _You still don’t_!” Anton snarled back. “You have _no idea_ the kind of pain that exists in this world and I pray to the Lady that _you will never find out_!”

            “How dare you!” Emily snapped back. “I watched Delilah steal my throne and my Empire, kill my best friend, turn my father to stone! I came to you for help, and you were gone, and now that I have _finally_ found you again—”

            Anton opened his mouth to respond and was brought up short by a sudden, surprised laugh. “Well, this is fucking familiar. Although I suppose you were the one insisting I didn’t know what being trapped felt like. All right, I’ll accept your pain if you’ll accept mine. But please. I’m _asking_ you, as your friend. Don’t kill him.”

            Emily’s mouth worked beneath the cloth wrapping. “Yes,” she said finally, the hand with the pistol drooping slightly. “All right, fine, you’re still my damn Royal Physician. If that’s your diagnosis, I won’t challenge it. But we still need a way to neutralize the clockwork soldiers.”

            “You still will not consider my proposal?” Jindosh’s pleading voice made Anton clench his fist at his side.

            “I suggest you stay fucking silent, Jindosh!” he roared, taking two steps forward and slamming the flat of his hand down on the desk beside him. The flinch Jindosh gave him soothed his feelings slightly, although the shout used up too much of his air, and he gasped for breath against the pain in his ribs, trying to cough and in too much pain to succeed properly.

            “Anton!” Emily was at his side in an instant, but he waved her back.

            “Keep—watch—Jindosh,” he wheezed. “I’ll be—all right.” What number lie was that, he wondered irritably. _You can kill yourself later_ , he promised, and the thought was morbidly comforting.

            After several long moments of blinding agony, he was able to get a breath into his lungs that did not make him feel as if he was about to faint, which freed up his mind to concentrate on other problems. A way to neutralize the clockwork soldiers? Although they had the override sequence, it would be impossible for the two of them to use it on every soldier in the city. The mansion, perhaps; it might take some time, but he had faith that Emily would be able to manage it, especially from Jindosh’s central laboratory, which surely had some control over the layout of the clockwork in the mansion itself.

            His initial thought—Jindosh’s suicide—would have destroyed the citizenry’s faith in the soldiers, through what would have essentially been a moral attack. Could they destroy the citizenry’s faith from another direction? Fear. Fear attacked the self. Fear did not rely on the innate goodness of a person but only on their sense of self-preservation, and that, too, was extremely powerful. Powerful enough to have kept him struggling against death for this long, even with what felt like everything having been stripped away.

            If the soldiers were to go berserk—if the soldiers were to trap Jindosh in his own laboratory, refuse to listen to his commands—well, then, suddenly the question became what else could those soldiers do? Turn on their commanders, slaughter the people of the city wholesale, anything. Who was to know if they were only obeying a new set of orders? Jindosh would not be believed, no matter how much he protested. Even the powerful few who believed him would not feel safe, for if Anton and Emily alone could turn Jindosh’s mansion against him, they could surely reach into the safety of the homes of those few.

            Anton turned to Emily. “Do you think you can reach more of the soldiers and reprogram them if I give you a set of instructions? It would need to be done swiftly, leaving a number of the guards intact to be subdued by the clockworks. If you restrain Jindosh, I’ll keep watch on him while ensuring the plan is sound.”

            “Your plan is to turn the soldiers to our side?”

            “To discredit Jindosh. To sow distrust of the soldiers.”

            “Oh,” Emily breathed. “Yes. I see.” She nodded slowly. “Yes. I believe such a plan could certainly work. Thank you.” She paused. “Royal Physician.”

            “Empress.” He inclined his head, the moment between them stretching oddly formal and oddly intimate, simultaneously. Then he gritted his teeth against the pain in his ribs. “Restrain Jindosh for me, will you? Then we’d better get started. This might take some time.”


	9. Fixed Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a reunion.

_As a function that always bends towards the same final solution, so am I drawn to you and so will I always return, captivated, to the safety of your arms. – love letter from Anton Sokolov to Piero Joplin_

            Anton surfaced from a grey fog of exhaustion and unconsciousness to the dull, leaden grey of the overcast sky above and the relatively strong rocking motion of a small boat beneath him to find Meagan Foster bending over him. It had taken nearly fifteen hours for he and Emily to finish reprogramming the clockwork soldiers at Jindosh’s mansion to his satisfaction, and for a good portion of that, he had had to endure Jindosh’s attempts at drawing him into conversation. Eventually, he had had Emily gag the man. By the time they had left the mansion behind, full of a group of Dunwall-loyal clockworks, he had felt that he might collapse at any moment, and, indeed, his memory cut out somewhere partway through the journey to the shore. He wondered briefly how Emily had gotten him back to the boat.

            “Thank god you’re all right, old man,” Meagan told him, but what had been an ironic nickname the last time he had seen her was now heavy with the weight of truth. A tearing cough gripped him, wracking his body from head to foot, and he groaned, struggling to sit upright and shuddering against the pain in his ribs. Two sets of hands helped him; he gripped the side of the rowboat and spat blood into the water below.

            “How are you feeling?” Emily asked.

            “Old,” Anton told her weakly, flopping back with a sigh. “Till now, I didn’t really think I’d see the light of day again. I’m not even sure I wanted to.” He regretted the words once they had left his mouth, for they had the ring of truth, and that final despair was not one he had wanted to burden Emily with. Meagan laid a hand on his, and Emily leaned into his back.

            “Oh,” she whispered.

            Shaking his head weakly, Anton reached around with an arm and held her. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” he murmured. The earlier formality between Empress and Physician had dissolved; now there was only mentor and pupil between them, or perhaps friendship. “Thank you, Emily.”

            He wasn’t sure if he was entirely conscious for the rest of the boat ride or not. Certainly the rocking of the boat jolted him painfully ever now and then, but the journey felt as if it took too long for the distance they were traveling. When they finally arrived, Emily and Meagan helped him carefully onto the deck, managing between them not to jar his ribs too badly. Anton thought of carrying Piero down from the rooftop of his greenhouse while Emily was still a child, and the tears trickled down his cheeks.

            Alexandria Hypatia met them on the deck and walked beside them as Emily and Meagan put an arm under each of his shoulders and helped him down below deck. Anton felt that he should have been surprised to see her, but, in the absence of anything urgent to draw his attention, his mind was washed out with exhaustion and grief.

            “What happened to him?” Hypatia asked quietly, and he gave her a tired glare.

            “I’m injured, not deaf,” he snarled. “As for injuries, bruised ribs on the left, one possible cracked on the right, minor electrical burns on the right and left temples, and an exacerbated irritation of the lungs that could lead to pneumonia if left untreated, especially given possible complications from the rib injuries and a prior history of illness in the lungs. What?” Hypatia was staring. “I am the fucking Royal Physician,” Anton reminded her forcefully before his legs gave way entirely.

            He maintained consciousness out of sheer stubbornness until Emily jogged the possibly-cracked rib getting him down the last step, and then everything disappeared in a fog of overwhelming grey.

            When he woke again, he was warm and horizontal. His ribs ached, not unexpectedly, and breathing was still somewhat difficult, but all things considered, he was reasonably comfortable, although for some reason the room smelled heavily of mint. He stirred, groaned, coughed miserably, and gentle fingers took his wrist, feeling for his pulse.

            “I’m fine,” Anton snapped, yanking his hand back without opening his eyes. “And what is that stench?”

            “It should be helping your breathing,” a soft voice responded, barely above a whisper, and Anton’s eyes flew open. “I distilled it from some of the foliage that, ah, Meagan was carrying.”

            “ _Slava bogu_.” The Tyvian dropped numbly from Anton’s lips, and one hand clutched at the lapel of Piero’s oversized coat. “You’re _dead_. I saw it. Emily confirmed it.”

            “What? Oh, no.” Piero’s hand went to his throat, where, Anton now saw, a puckered red line ran down the side toward the center, ending just above his supersternal notch. “It was a nasty injury but fortunately it missed most of the primary blood vessels in the area.”

            “No infection?”

            “Meagan cleaned the wound well.” Piero bent over him. “You are significantly more injured than I.”

            “Fuck me,” Anton groaned, and then he grabbed Piero’s collar and dragged him onto the bed. Piero gave vent to a soft, gasping sob, and then his hands were in Anton’s hair.

            “I th-th-th-thought y-you were g-g-gone,” he muttered. “I d-d-did not know h-how I would go on.”

            “I didn’t know either,” Anton said, voice muffled in Piero’s coat. “I think I’d have put a bullet in my brain. Without even you left, I—there was nothing.”

            “Do not be more of an imbecile than you can help,” Piero told him. “Meagan and Emily—”           

            “—are not you.” But Anton felt a flicker of guilt, all the same. “Yes, well, perhaps I’d have thought better of it,” he muttered.

            “Tosha,” murmured Piero. “When Meagan told me Emily had returned with you, I feared the worst.” He pressed his forehead into Anton’s.

            “It takes more than a few weeks of torture to kill me,” Anton rasped. “Luckily enough, it didn’t occur to Jindosh to find bull rats.” He tried to smile, but was arrested by a coughing fit instead.

            “I almost think I would like to kill him,” Piero told him, offering a handkerchief for Anton to cough into.

            “I almost did,” Anton admitted. “I nearly had Emily put a pistol to his temple and pull the trigger.”

            “Why did you not?”

            Anton swallowed painfully. “Because Corvo didn’t kill me, I think,” he said. “Or—or because I’ve seen vengeance taken and vengeance left untaken. And, on the whole, vengeance left untaken has been kinder to me.”

            Piero smiled at him. “I hope you do not compare yourself to Jindosh.”

            “Shit, no. I’m much smarter. And I have a fucking heart. But, all the same—”

            Lips were pressed into his forehead. “It is frightening to live only for revenge,” Piero murmured in agreement. “What do you do when you reach its end?”

            “But how is it that Emily told me you were dead?” She had, hadn’t she? Admittedly, Anton’s memories over the previous day were one long blur of pain and hopelessness, but he was relatively certain that Emily had, if not flat-out stated Piero’s death, heavily implied it.

            “W-Well,” Piero slid slightly to the side on the bed. “Sh-Sh-She d-d-does not know that I l-lived.”

            “You and Meagan let Emily think—shit, man, _why_? She’s cut apart with guilt.”

            “It…it is complicated.”

            “And I’m the head of the fucking Academy. I think that I can handle complexity.”

            “Technically, you resigned several weeks ago.”

            Anton growled.

            “W-Well. Meagan h-had a dream.” Piero hunched his shoulders. “She s-says that I w-warned her that Delilah knew of m-me, that sh-she wanted me d-dead, and that if Emily knew that I l-lived, I would be in d-danger.”

            “Why?”

            “I-I d-do not b-believe I s-said.” Piero twisted his fingers in the fabric of Anton’s shirt. “I, um, d-do not r-remember any such interaction with M-Meagan, but then I do not know that I would.”

            Anton shook his head. “Emily has the mark of the Outsider,” he said meditatively. “That, at least, is indisputable. From what she told me, it sounds as if Delilah does as well.”

            “Y-yes, from what she has told Meagan and me, I believe so.”

            “Something to do with that, then. Meagan doesn’t have a mark.” He chuckled. “I can’t believe I’m thankful for once in my life that the Outsider remains firmly uninterested in me. But this makes things very complicated.”

            “Ah—well. Y-yes, I suppose it does.”

            Anton leaned against Piero, breathing in the familiar scent mixed with the heavy stench of mint. Piero put an awkward arm around his shoulders and leaned into his hair. Anton chewed slowly on his knuckle as he tried to think. “Emily’s close to breaking point,” he said shortly. “With Corvo enchanted and the persistent rumors about the Crown-killer—”

            “—who has been neutralized.”

            “Hm, good, she didn’t mention that. We didn’t have much time for chatting. You’ll need to fill me in. But it’s cruel to keep Emily thinking that you’re dead, and that I’m—” He paused and ran a hand through his hair. “—well. Heartbroken, for lack of a better word.”

            Piero sought his hand and squeezed it. “I. W-would have felt the same. S-sometimes I think you forget that we are m-married.”

            “Oh, marriage.” Anton waved a hand expressively. “Human conventions. You suggested it.”

            “You s-seduced me.”

            “People already thought we were fucking anyway.” He smiled and kissed Piero softly on the mouth, deliberately belying the carelessness of his words. “This isn’t getting us anywhere on the problem at hand.”

            “I-I do n-not know if w-we should tell Emily,” Piero mumbled miserably. “I d-do not want to hurt her, b-but—”

            “Yes, I don’t really want people to start trying to kill you again. They might do a better job of it this time.” He frowned. “An unpleasant dilemma.”

            A soft knock on the door made them both look up. Before Piero could dislodge himself, Meagan’s voice called through the door, “It’s me! Emily is still asleep.”

            “Come in,” Anton called roughly as he felt Piero relax against him. He slumped sideways as well.

            Meagan leaned against the door as she often did, her face troubled. “I had another dream,” she said. “About Piero, again. Piero, have you told Anton about—” she cut herself off as the two of them nodded. “Yes. I had another one.”

            “So it is either _not_ me, or, um, well, I do not know of another alternative.” Piero frowned. “I have been awake for several hours, tending to Anton.”

            “Yes, um, you covered that.” Meagan put a hand into her hair. “I’m just not sure if I believe you. You said that it wasn’t you yet.”

            Piero blinked and pushed his spectacles up his nose.

            “That’s senseless,” Anton complained. “Traveling through time only works in one direction. If it didn’t, there’d be no such thing as free will at all; everything would have to be foreordained. The universe is not so orderly, nor so aware of the beings within it.”

            “No,” Piero disagreed. “That is not true. Only if one must always follow the same path—”

            “Well, you’d have to, wouldn’t you, because if you didn’t then you wouldn’t have been there and we wouldn’t have seen you.”

            “That is true if a man is only one line,” Piero expressed. “But consider a man who is, instead, a sum of probabilities.”

            Anton glanced sideways at him. “What do you mean?” he said, slowly. Piero’s voice had a hollow, frightened sort of certainty in it.

            “There are so many choices.” Piero’s hand tightened in Anton’s. “We make so many every day and in so doing we shape the line of ourselves that we see, the path we trace out in our memories. But suppose that—somewhere—there is another place alongside of this one, where there is another shadow of ourselves that has formed of a different choice. Then the whole of the man might be the sum of all those paths. But only in one of them might he—might I—have spoken to this, um, line of Meagan. And I might have started in another.”

            “All that is outside this world is the Void,” Anton objected, but he was wavering.

            “Then perhaps a reflection in the Void. From what scraps I do remember, I could certainly believe such a thing. I—do not say that it _was_ I who spoke to Meagan, but it could have been.”

            “Well, what did this other Piero say?”

            “He said that we would need his—your—our Piero’s help from the outside. He said—” Meagan sighed and looked at the ground. “He told you to stop taking your tonic.”

            “What!” Anton exploded and immediately cursed as pain lanced sideways through his ribs. “What kind of an idiotic scheme is that,” he managed once it had subsided.

            He could feel Piero trembling against him, but his husband’s voice was steady and uninterrupted, if slow, as he spoke, his habitual stammer not in evidence despite the obvious tension in his shoulders. “It would mean having someone watching from the Void,” Piero said softly. “It would mean whatever Delilah is caught up in, if it has compromised Emily—if it has compromised _the Outsider_ —there would be someone to stop it from there. And I have made no bargain.”

            “Or it would mean walking right into a transparent trap!” Anton shot back. “Do you think someone who knows you well enough to pretend to be you could not predict that you’d say that?”

            “It does seem that it matters whether we can trust that the message was not compromised,” Piero said, appallingly calm from Anton’s point of view.

            “No, it doesn’t, because you’re not going to do something that fucking stupid,” Anton told him, crossing his arms across his chest.

            “I suspect a carefully-tuned dosage of laudanum would keep me from waking up without interruption until such a time as it became necessary—”

            “Are you completely _mad_?” Anton demanded. “Such a strain on your system would hardly be indicated if you were in the prime of youth and health. As it is—”

            “As it is, I d-do not know that there is m-much choice,” Piero said quietly. “I cannot recall my dreams when I waken. I never could recall all, even before the tonic. And I do not know if wakening will disrupt my memories once I am sleeping either, but I would not care to risk it.”

            “Such measures have never been necessary before—”

            “Because we have been unconscionably _lucky_ before!” Piero burst out. They were facing each other on the bed now, flushed and angry. “I cannot tell you how many times we have been saved through sheer, unadulterated luck! A spark crossing a _screwdriver_ ended the Dunwall Plague! The Hakiutl beast would have torn your throat out if it hadn’t been for the bone charm I fell literally on top of! And the ghostbreath stone—”

            “It would be unconscionable luck if you _survived_ the attempt you’re describing!”

            “Both of you. Please.” Meagan held a hand up from the door. “Fighting won’t help.”

            “What you’re talking about could be suicide,” Anton said tightly, trying to moderate his voice a little. “I won’t lose you again, dammit.”

            Piero’s face went flat; he removed his glasses and polished them against his shirt. “You are not the only one who cares for the future of Dunwall,” he said stonily.

            “Outsider’s balls, man, you think I don’t know that?” Anton ran an agitated hand through his hair. “But—to trust such a slim possibility—”

            “Which is why, as I said, we require some way of verifying whether the message was legitimate or not.”

            “Uh, well, there was one other thing?” Meagan hazarded. “I’m sorry, I should have said it first, but it was peculiar, and I’ve been trying to reassemble the dream in my head since I woke up. ‘Niseroot and belladonna.’”

            Anton’s mouth opened, head swinging around to Meagan and back to Piero, whose eyebrows went up. “Fuck,” Anton said shortly. “Piero, _no_.”

            “Belladonna for the coldwort,” Piero said, looking pleased. “Not only is it likely the message came from me, but I am well aware of your probable reaction to the suggestion.”

            “You’re conspiring with yourself,” Anton growled. “Fine, I concede no one but you could know about the interaction between the damn brandy and your damn sleep darts, at least not without the Outsider’s intervention.”

            “I doubt he would think of it, even if it is possible that he might be able to find out,” Piero pointed out. “The odds are high that the message is legitimate.” He sighed, and Anton followed his gaze to the little bottle of nerve tonic that always sat beside their bed.

            “Just because some version of you is an idiot doesn’t mean _you_ have to be, isn’t that whole point you were making?” Anton was probably begging, but he didn’t care.

            “Just because some version of you does not like the choice I wish to make does not mean I should not make it.”

            “Petja.” Anton took him by the shoulders. “I can’t guarantee your safety if you do this. And if something happened to you now—”

            “I know,” Piero said in a low voice. “I-I d-d-do know, T-T-Tosha. B-But I c-cannot watch Emily d-dash herself to pieces on the rocks of th-these recent events and not even try to aid her. You are not the only one who cares for her.”

            Anton shut his eyes. He knew from long experience how stubborn Piero could be when he had finally decided that something needed to happen, which he did not do lightly. “Design the dosage,” he said, finally, heavily. “I’ll assist you, and I’ll administer it, but you’re the better chemist.”

            “I w-won’t leave you,” Piero muttered downwards, and then he looked up, glanced sideways at Meagan, and kissed Anton clumsily. “Um, I love you.”

            “Fuck,” Anton whispered, torn between anxiety and affection. “ _Ja lyubu tebja, Petja_. _Dousha.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by me :)


	10. Property Dualism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Piero upgrades the Heart, and Anton keeps vigil.

_The question must then be posed: what is the nature of the mind? Is it wholly a separate entity from the physical form, does it arise as an emergent complex entity from the physical, or is there no distinction to be drawn in any meaningful way? Some of the old Tyvian tales you’ve told me seem to imply a belief that the mind resides in the Void, the body in the realm of matter. – letter from Delilah Copperspoon to Anton Sokolov, 1821_

            The Void itself seems agitated. Strange, strong winds, redolent with fine white dust, blow across the landscape, and Piero is forced to hunch down and shield his sketches with his arms. He has seen two more whales pass by overhead, both of them singing, and he is hollow with the pain of it, shrunk and wrung out already from the effort of cudgeling his brain to design the thing in front of him.

            It has taken on an almost three-dimensional character, and if he does not focus on it, if he watches it merely out of the corner of his eye, Piero is almost certain he can see it beating weakly. The design is ready; it awaits only the instantiation. And it is the instantiation that has Piero stymied. He can see no way of handling the actual Heart without alerting at least the Outsider to his presence, and if the Outsider is alerted, Delilah may very well be as well. Perhaps, he thinks to himself, it must be chanced now.

            Turning up the high collar of his coat against the winds, he begins to roll his sketches up. The familiar motion is calming, the touch of the paper rough against his fingertips and the tightening curve beneath his palms becoming stronger as he pulls. Once the roll has been formed, he feels in his pocket until he comes across a bit of string, which he ties tightly around it. The knot will not be undone, but he should be able to slip the papers out when needed.

            “You’re ready, then?”

            He starts. He was concentrating so deeply that he almost forgot that Jessamine is still there, waiting patiently. He does not think he told her his plans, but he cannot be sure; he often speaks out loud without realizing it when he is working, and he does not know whether that would even be necessary for her to understand in this place. She has been here for a long time, and a strangeness hangs about her, as if the Void has seeped into her bones, though it is a much more subtle strangeness than that which clings to Delilah or the Outsider. Gravity hangs on her, and there are shadows holding tight to her form, but her outline seems to ripple occasionally, as if a veil of water were interposed between the two of them. And there is also the oddity of her youth. She looks only a few years older than Emily, now, and something about that juxtaposition is oddly poignant.

            “Y-Yes. I have completed the plans. Now all that r-remains is to implement them on the actual device.”

            “You’re going to see Emily.”

            “Yes.”

            “I’ll accompany you.” She holds out a hand, and Piero blinks at it in consternation.

            “Um,” he stammers. Then, “Ah?”

            “I don’t want us to get separated,” Jessamine explains, which is logical, yes, but this is not a situation that Piero is prepared for. It is not a situation that he could possibly be prepared for, in fact. He has only held the hand of one other person, and, even that, rather rarely. Most of the time while running for their lives.

            He has no idea how to explain all this, however, and Jessamine is simply waiting, patiently. Piero opens his mouth, but his words have deserted him. Finally, he says, “Levels of acceptable physical contact vary a great deal according to culture. In the northern parts of Tyvia, it is common for friends to hold hands or sit closely together, a custom that perhaps arises from the frigid climate. In Serkonos, greeting even new acquaintances with a kiss on the cheek is expected behavior, which can lead to confusion or offense when interacting with people from Gristol or Morley, where such contact is generally reserved for interactions between lovers and generally confined to behind closed doors.”

            Jessamine stares, then snorts with laughter. “Just take my hand,” she says. “The statement you are making is that neither of us wants to get lost in the Void.”

            “C-Culturally, I-I am n-not certain if that is a known piece of information to be c-communicated—”

            “That’s why we have _words_ , Joplin,” Jessamine says patiently.

            Piero tucks his rolled-up sketches into his coat, licks his lips, and gingerly reaches out with a stiff arm. Jessamine sighs and closes the distance between them. Her hand is smaller than his, although only by a size or two. Piero feels the coldness of sweat welling up in his palm, and desperately wishes that he could properly control physical sensations when he is not even in his body. It is not fair; a minor point, perhaps, but just one more thing in the sea of inconveniences and worse that has been his life lately.

            “I am s-s-sorry,” he manages, then wonders if it would have been better not to comment.

            Jessamine laughs again, but it is a kind laugh. “I’m honestly not sure why, but whatever you are apologizing for is probably minor compared to everything else.”

            Wisely, Piero decides not to speak again. He can feel heat forming on his ears and cheeks as he raises the lens to his eye with his free hand. His stomach shifts as he takes the first step forward, wondering if holding hands is enough or if instead the lens will take him and leave Jessamine behind, but, reassuringly, he can still feel her hand in his. So perhaps it was a necessary step to take.

            They arrive in Emily’s quarters in the _Dreadful Wale_. She is curled up in her bed, and Piero can hear soft, sad noises drifting upwards from the lump beneath the covers. He takes a deep breath and pauses in confusion again, as the sensation feels correct, but it really should not, nor should it have any means of calming his nerves. It is astonishing what constructs the mind can make, and, for a dizzy moment, he is suddenly afraid that he has woken, that the laudanum has worn off, that all their plans and attempts have already collapsed.

            Then Jessamine takes a step forward, form rippling like water as she approaches the bed, and the concern vanishes. Piero follows her, then awkwardly clears his throat, wondering if Emily is even able to perceive him. It seems she is, because the noises go quiet, and she sits up, drawing the covers down from her head. She has stripped down to a dark shirt and dark trousers, and her hair is tangled from night-time movements. She stares at him, her breath coming in suddenly, and then an expression of pain crumples across her face as she looks from Jessamine to him and back.

            “Emily, I n-need to s-speak with you.”

            “Of course.” She seems weary; perhaps unsurprising if she was asleep or attempting to fall asleep. Or if she is asleep? He is still not entirely certain he understands the mechanism of communication at work here. “Anything.”

            “M-May I see your clockwork Heart?”

            Emily blinks. “What?” She glances to the side and seems to notice Jessamine for the first time. “Mother, what’s going on?” Blinking sleep out of her eyes, she sits up properly and swings her legs over the side of her bed.

            Jessamine smiles at her. “Aren’t you going to fetch Delilah’s soul? You’ll need a proper container for it, and right now—” she glances sideways at Piero, who supplies, “—it has not the capacity to contain two souls.”

            Emily frankly gawks. “You are here to…to upgrade my gear?”

            “Apparently I make a habit of it for the f-family,” Piero responds, then wonders how he, of all people, could possibly have managed a joke at this, of all times. “Um.”

            But Emily actually smiles, a small and rather surprised smile. Rising from the bed, she shakes out her long hair and then moves towards the little desk, where her coat lies folded, with the handle of the old folding blade that Piero constructed for Corvo poking out the end from beneath. She rifles through for a moment and then produces something red and pulsating contained within its surface net of gleaming steel and the single small wire that sends periodic electrical signals to muscles that should have decayed long ago. It is only now that Piero recognizes that the small glass circle he connected to the wires as the power source is something akin to the lens he holds now in his hand.

            The construction of the original harness was fifteen years ago, and his memories are somewhat confused, but he recalls treating the glass with a strange solution that he is almost certain involved several drops of raw trans, though he cannot recall the origin of the glass lens itself. He knows he had intended to use the glass as a receptacle for power, but he is blurry on the subject of how that power was to be produced. Now it occurs to him that there is some sort of energy powering the supernatural powers that both Corvo and Emily evinced subsequent to their bargains with the Outsider and that something which could collect and transform such energy into electrical signals would be the perfect power source for a device like the Heart. And it is certainly conceivable then, that such a device, if used improperly, would not only function as a power source—or more accurately a power transformer—for the thing Emily described as the Oraculum, but would also be capable of performing the sort of power draining effect she reported observing the lens having upon someone called Breanna Ashworth.

            So. That is one mystery partially solved, at least. Now all that is necessary is to perform the upgrades Piero has carefully marked on the blueprints inside his coat, which he retrieves and slips out of their containing string. Emily moves to the side to allow him to bend over the Heart—which is the point at which he realizes that, while he can manipulate the Heart itself and the glass lens, his fingers pass right through the metal harness itself.

            “Hm,” says Piero.

            “Um, Piero, do you have a message I could take to Anton from you?” Emily asks hesitantly.

            Piero nods slowly. “Yes, I believe so. Can you tell him that he will have to provide you with three sizes of screwdriver, one five millimeters, one three, and one 1.5? I am afraid that evidence suggests that he will be unlikely to be able to perform the necessary steps himself, but you are an apt pupil and if you cannot follow the blueprints I can explain anything that is unclear.”

            Emily blinks in surprise. “I meant, um, anything you might want to say to him.”

            “Yes, this is rather important.” Piero looks up at her in confusion.

            She takes a deep breath. “I mean, that you, um, that you love him, or something like that?”

            “Oh, well, thank you, but I can tell him that when I wake up.”

            A solemn look swallows up Emily’s face; she squints her eyes shut, and Piero is confused, because it almost looks as if she is blinking back tears. “Don’t you know?” she asks in a hushed voice. “You—the Crown-killer—”

            Oh. That’s right. Emily has not yet been informed as to the current true state of affairs. “No, no, I am fine,” Piero explains. “The knife was fortunately ill-aimed to cause a true fatality. I am working under the influence of a laudanum derivative of my own design in order that we have someone helping you in both worlds.”

            She looks thunderstruck. “You aren’t _dead_? And you didn’t _tell_ me?”

            Piero shuffles awkwardly. “There was some evidence to suggest that your bond with the Outsider might allow Delilah to discover my, um, vital status. But circumstances have become urgent.”

            “I’m going to kill both of you.” But she sounds more animated than she has up until now. “Fuck you,” she adds thoughtfully after a moment, then glances nervously towards Jessamine.

            Jessamine laughs and waves a hand. “They deserve it. Anton, at least, always did.”

            Emily breaks into a sudden, confused smile, which Piero is glad to see, but there is no time for pleasantries. “I am afraid we m-m-must complete these upgrades in a t-timely manner,” he interposes as gently as he can.

            “Right.” Emily nods, and he is saddened to see that the smile disappears as quickly as it appeared. “I’ll go wake Anton and see what he has to say.”

            Piero is treated to the stomach-turning sight of Emily melting away at the edge of some arbitrarily-defined boundary near the door, the colors that make up her form dissipating like so many bubbles. “Oh dear,” he says mildly, glancing sideways at Jessamine. “I wish I understood this better. I cannot tell what kind of space we occupy now.”

            “Try being me,” Jessamine sighs. Her form is illuminated from within and she appears almost two-dimensional. Piero thinks he can see curls of white smoke or mist forming inside it, and he has to shake his head and blink for her to firm up. Not for the first time, he wonders just how much Jessamine has been changed by her time in the Void and whether there is any consistency to it. Sometimes she appears fully human; at other times, like now, she is a wavering form of insubstantial mist.

            It seems like a very long time before Emily returns, and she does so not by opening the door but by forming, in a way that Piero finds oddly reminiscent of the deposition of sediment settling on the bottom of a riverbank, on her bed. She blinks slowly and then shivers as she sits up. “I’m sorry, I had to fall back asleep again,” she tells Piero. “Conversing back and forth is difficult.” She thinks about this for a long moment. “I wonder—I can hear Mother even when I am awake, at least a bit. Do you think if necessary you could relay suggestions through her?”

            Piero looks at Jessamine, who nods slowly. “It is—difficult to speak in the physical world,” she says slowly. “But I believe if we communicated sufficiently slowly, and the circumstances were urgent enough—yes. I could do that.”

            “It should not be necessary at this juncture,” Piero says meditatively. “Even if you must be awake to perform the necessary modifications to the vessel, I believe a sufficiently detailed explanation from me in advance will be all that is necessary, presuming you are able to take the blueprints with you.”

            “I may as well see if I can do it from here first.” She swings herself out of bed once again. She is holding a soft leather packet that Piero knows well—it is the satchel he uses to transport his more delicate tools.

            Emily seats herself in front of the desk and carefully reaches out for the clockwork scaffold around the heart. She nods to herself when she is able to touch and minutely shift the metal around it. Piero bends over her shoulder, silently pointing to the first spot on his blueprints that requires attention.

            As far as he knows, Emily has not done laboratory work in several months, and, even prior to his and Anton’s departure from Dunwall Tower, she did not have a great deal of time to devote to such studies between her political responsibilities and her training with Corvo. Still, her hands are steady, and, though she frowns, she works with a surety born of long practice. As she does so, it becomes evident to Piero that something even stranger than expected is occurring. As it did when she woke, Emily’s form seems to break apart into mismatched globs of color, like some of the paintings done by one of Anton’s more adventurous pupils, but instead of dissolving entire, her form holds together, hovering at the edge of dissipation.

            She works for another moment or two in this state, then looks up, alarmed. “Piero?” she exclaims. “Are you there?”

            Before he can stop himself, he lays a hand on her shoulder. “I am s-still here,” he tells her. _I suppose this is physical contact for the sake of reassurance. I believe I forgot to list such a use to Jessamine earlier_. But it still seems odd to him, in his knowledge of social behaviors, that this ought to feel acceptable—and yet it does.

            “You’ve gone all blurry around the edges,” Emily tells him in concern. “And I feel—peculiar.”

            “I b-believe th-that I have experienced th-this state before.” Fifteen years ago, when he woke from a daze to find his hands empty and the worktable smelling of copper and ink. “It m-may be uncomfortable, but it is only the state between awake and asleep. I believe.”

            “Just—don’t go anywhere,” Emily tells him, and something draws him to squeeze her shoulder. It is, he thinks, something Anton might do.

            The work proceeds apace; Piero can feel the rightness of the design even in another’s hands. In truth, the modifications are not extensive, but they change the shape of the object in some indefinable way; more than that, they change the way the light seems to bend around it. Before, there was a sense of completeness, of fullness; as Emily works, that sense wanes, leaving instead a sensation of emptiness—a container in need of filling. Piero did not expect the strange tugging that assails him as she clicks together the last relay, and he takes a hasty step back.

            Emily cups the heart between her hands, lifting it and examining it from all sides. Piero takes another step back. There is a power in the thing in front of him, and the pull is growing stronger, but Emily does not seem to feel it. It occurs to Piero suddenly that Emily is asleep in her natural cycle but he is trapped in unconsciousness, held by the power of the laudanum and the strange patterns of his own brain. Jessamine is tethered already, and although he, too, must in some sense be tethered to his own form, that form is far away and this object is nearby.

            “Emily,” he chokes out. “Emily, you must take it away.”

            She looks up, the swirling blotches that make up her face solidifying a little, and he does not know what she sees, but she blanches, cupping her hands more tightly around the heart between them. “Go,” she tells him. “You can go, can’t you? Get out of here, I’ll get Anton to wake you.”

            “N-N-No, that is not n-n-necessary.” But Piero’s staggered response is not a consequence of his old speech troubles, but rather due to the sudden and violent chattering of his teeth. The shape between Emily’s hands no longer looks like a heart, but a hole.

            Piero glances sideways to Jessamine, but she wears an expression of blank incomprehension. He holds out a hand to her. “We must go,” he tells her tersely. “I c-cannot remain or—” He cannot find the words, but Jessamine must understand from the expression on his face, for she takes the proffered hand with no protestation, and then they are running, Piero raising the lens to one eye even as his feet begin to move.

            The hole at the back of his head pulls maddeningly. Twice he finds that he has turned around entire and is forced to course correct to avoid running directly back toward it, like a moth to the flame. He knows there is nothing so simple as a fiery death awaiting him if he falls in.

            Yet each step is a struggle, as if he is pulling against a chain sunk between his shoulder blades, as if each step requires him to draw his foot up from an endless quagmire of sucking mud. The Void is dark around them, and the shrieking of whalesong has begun again. Piero’s vision blurs, and when he raises a hand to clear his eyes, it comes away damp with moisture.

            They stagger down a series of stone steps with blue mist swirling around them, and then Piero falls forward as the ground he expected simply does not meet his feet. There is a liquid sucking noise. The hand not wrapped in Jessamine’s reaches out instinctively to break his fall, and it is only at the last moment that he manages to angle himself sideways so that he does not strike the ground with his full weight above the precious lens.

            His side strikes soft mud, but his momentum does not end until his shoulder hits something much more solid with a sharp cracking noise. Piero curls around himself, the lens now tucked into his chest, and he whimpers, waiting for the initial wave of dizzy pain to pass. After a long moment, it does so, and he is able to sit up slowly and take stock of his surroundings.

            Jessamine, looking decidedly more solid than she has done for the past several hours, is standing waist deep in a patch of heavy reeds, rubbing her hand. The solid thing at Piero’s back rustles with the alien noise of wind through leaves, and he looks up to see the gnarled, solid black tree he spent several hours hovering near when the Void split into pieces in front of him. There is more light now than there was then, and he can see that, along the thin branches that end in small, olive-colored leaves, there are long, thin spines, nearly a hand-span in length. And the hole in Piero’s mind is gone.

            He sags with relief, leaning back against the rough bark and simply breathing. The air is heavy and oddly sweet, thick with a scent that does not seem to belong in this place. Laudanum. He is suddenly aware of the sensation, distant and light but nonetheless discernable, of a hand on his wrist, fingers brushing the hollow where his pulse can be felt.

            “Are you able to tell Emily th-that I am all right?” he asks Jessamine. “I th-think they may be going to try to wake me up, and I b-believe that would be premature.”

            “What _was_ that?” Jessamine asks.

            “I believe the upgraded vessel is performing beyond expectations,” Piero explains. “It is—incomplete. Like a vacuum draws in air, it is attempting to draw in a free soul.”

            “But you aren’t—free.”

            “I am n-n-not, b-but I w-was the closest and m-most weakly bound to my own—vessel.”

            “And now…”

            “And now Emily and Anton are m-most probably trying to pull me out of th-this state in a fit of anxiety.” He pauses. “Which, to be fair, m-may be the most reasonable course of action. But I believe I can still be of aid here.”

            “But it _won’t_ draw you in?”

            “I can no longer feel it. Presumably we have passed beyond its horizon of effect.”

            “If you’re sure,” Jessamine says doubtfully.

            “It is, admittedly, not something I have performed an in-depth study of,” Piero says, continuing to lean back against the tree. It is nice to have something sturdy behind him, something that feels solid in the midst of the confusing twists and shifting landscapes of this place. “But we have not stopped Delilah yet. And I find that I d-do not wish to give up just yet.” At some point, when he was not paying attention, he passed beyond fear and into a quiet space beyond. Now he only wishes for this trial to be over so that he can see Anton again, hear his voice swearing in Tyvian, touch his naked skin and bathe in his warmth. Piero rubs clammy hands together and pulls his coat more tightly around him, shivering. He has no time for the longing any more than he has time for fear. “I believe we can right this wrong,” he says quietly, after Jessamine has not moved.

            She starts at his voice and blinks. Something in her expression shifts, and her hand clenches at her side. “Yes,” she says, in a much firmer voice, and Piero sees the Empress awaken in her. “I will let Anton and Emily know and return to you once I have done so.”

~

            The candle was burning low. Anton’s shoulder and ribs were aching, and his eyes drooped with weariness. Meagan had tried to relieve him twice now, but after the events of the previous night, he was hesitant to go back to sleep. First he’d been pulled out of bed by an angry Emily, demanding to know why she hadn’t been informed that Piero was alive and also requiring his tools for something that was most definitely Outsider bullshit. Then, not an hour later, Emily had come in terrified, asking that he wake Piero up, saying rather incoherently that something was wrong. Sure enough, they ran into Meagan in the hall, coming out of Piero’s room to report that he was in severe convulsions, a feverish fit significantly worse than any he had had in years.

            With mounting fear and hands that still shook too much under pressure, even after years of scrupulously avoiding more than a glass or two of wine at a time, Anton had made sure that Piero wasn’t going to choke on his own vomit or bite his tongue off, and then gone about trying to mix up a concoction that might be able to counteract the laudanum still flowing through his veins. Before he could administer more than a few drops, Emily had grabbed his arm and was gabbling something about Piero telling her not to waken him yet. Respect for the Empress or care for Emily be damned, Anton would have ignored her on such a medical matter if the fever hadn’t chosen that moment to release Piero’s limbs from its fearful grip. He now lay quietly, breathing still shallow, but not so far away from normal as to be alarming. Anton passed a hand in front of his eyes and rolled his shoulder.

            It couldn’t be that late. Emily wasn’t back yet. Damn. He was all over aches and pains. Maybe he really was getting old. But it wasn’t only that. There was something more than a little unpleasant about sitting here in the half dark, waiting again. He had spent an inordinate amount of time in the past few weeks waiting—waiting for information about the Crown-killer, waiting to die, waiting for Emily to return. Waiting for Piero to wake up.

            Anton did not enjoy waiting. He would far rather be doing something, but there was nothing to be done, other than to mix up the laudanum formula of Piero’s devising and check to make sure that the dosage was correct and that Piero was still responding to it correctly. Other than the previous night, he hadn’t responded badly, but feeding him was also grating on Anton’s nerves. There was something eerie about spooning gruel down a man’s throat that he swallowed with his eyes shut, especially when that man was probably the most important person in Anton’s life. He hated the lifeless drooping of Piero’s hands on the coverlet, hated the fact that all the indication of the bright mind housed inside the skinny form was the occasional heavy sigh or murmured nonsensical word.

            “Damn you, Petja,” he said softly, and found he didn’t have much else to add. “Damn you,” he said again, and sighed, and leaned his head against the wall, and tried not to sleep.

            The flickering of the candle alerted him when the door opened, and he looked up, half-expecting to see Meagan, but it was Emily who entered, drooping with weariness, and flung herself down in the chair across from him. “I’ve dethroned Duke Abele,” she said, blunt and sounding a little poleaxed at her frank admission of having defanged one of their greatest enemies and Delilah’s greatest asset. “I didn’t kill him. Actually, I think it was a very neat coup.”

            “Oh?” Anton raised an eyebrow at her.

            “He has—had a body double. I abstracted the item his guards used them to tell them apart, and—well. That’s that. And I,” she swallowed thickly, “I’ve got Delilah’s soul.”

            “You’ve been busy.” Despite his pride, Anton could not repress a yawn. “You’re doing amazingly,” he muttered through the fog of sleep. “Little Emily Kaldwin.”

            “I couldn’t have done it without you and Piero and Meagan.”

            “Well. An Empress isn’t supposed to run an Empire by herself. You’re doing pretty well with a reduced court.”

            Emily snickered at that, a surprised sound drawn out of her all at once. “I don’t know what to do next, though,” she admitted. “I mean, I know I have to go after Delilah, but I don’t really know what she’s trying to do.” She scratched the back of her head. “From my visions of the Outsider, it’s not just taking the kingdom. It’s more than that, but I don’t know what.”

            Anton felt the old familiar hunger rise at Emily’s easy admission, but he tamped it down. It was only an echo, anyway. He had more important things to do these days than chase a damn shadow.

            “All right, start at the beginning,” he said bluntly. “She claims that she’s the bastard child of Emperor Euhorn, that she wants revenge on you and yours for what Jess did to her. What else? She’s a competent painter, more than competent, really, with an extraordinary imagination, and she’s tied to the Outsider somehow.”

            Emily stared at him. “By the Void, you _did_ know her. I thought she might be lying.”

            Anton nodded. “She was a pupil of mine. Tried to trick her way into my bed so I’d take her on and when that didn’t work, she bought me a drink. That did.”

            “All right, she lied a little.”

            “She said I fucked her?” Anton smiled, grimly amused. “She’d have liked that. It would have given her more control, in her mind at least.” He stretched, rolling his shoulder, and leaned over to check Piero’s pulse. It was a little stronger than it had been earlier, which was reassuring. “I don’t know her well enough to say what she’d want more than an Empire or revenge, though. She used to be—not kind, I wouldn’t ever call Delilah kind—but hellbent on justice, I suppose. Not just for herself, I mean.”

            Emily paced back and forth beside the bed, twisting a hand in her hair. “I found some strange things in Duke Abele’s palace,” she mused. “There was a small painting in the vault, covered in blue runes with a bone charm set into the top of the frame. It was like a window into the Void. I could reach out and touch the branches of a tree inside it. Oh, and here.” She handed him a sheaf of paper. “I found this, and the cipher-book that went with it. It’s a list of items, maybe ingredients. Whalebone, leather, three drops of blood…some plants that I don’t know very well, and then a list of minerals. I know lapis lazuli is used for pigments—what about these others?”

            Anton frowned, scanning down the list of materials. “I’ve encountered a number of these plants during my studies of rituals to invoke the Outsider,” he said, after a moment. “But to most people they’re just plants. This—” he paused with a finger halfway down the page. “— _Viriditas somnoctorum._ It is known colloquially as ‘dark bindweed’, as it has a peculiar strength and a tendency to twine around whatever supports it can find. Some call it ‘deathrope’ as it supposedly has a particular affinity for carcasses and bones, a statement I’ve never found to be particularly true. Nutrients do leech out of a decaying corpse and bones make a fine scaffold for a climbing plant, that’s all. I believe it’s what is referred to in a number of old texts and rituals I discovered deep under Dunwall as ‘dreamweed,’ judging from the physical description—a star-shaped flower with indigo petals and long, pale stamen that appear almost silvery in a low light, in addition to the tendency to climb and the serrated shape of the leaves. Some of the references imply it has hallucinogenic properties—which I can definitely confirm—” Emily laughed, and he paused in his lecture to look up and chuckle as well, “—but I don’t believe that this is widely held knowledge. I had to dig pretty deep to find this; Piero’s heard my lectures on the subject, but most other people have not…” He trailed off, tapping a finger against his lower lip. “Oh, _fuck_ me,” he sighed after another moment. “Kaldwin’s Bridge. She’ll have gone through there first thing.” He shook his head. “I’m getting old. I should have expected that.”

            His tired brain was trying to put all the pieces together. Whalebone, leather and blood for a bone charm, dreamweed for old rituals, and, most oddly out of place, lapis lazuli and several other minerals that Emily had correctly hypothesized were useful in the manufacture of paints.

            Anton frowned. _Bone and ash_ , something in his mind whispered. “Did I ever tell you the story of the mad painter of Dabokva?” he asked Emily, and she shook her head. “No, I found out later it was too close to some of the old rituals for comfort, I suppose. Briefly, it’s about an artist who begins painting pictures that create effects in the world. Eventually, his heart is eaten by the Lady in White for his trouble. Tyvian fairytales don’t tend toward happy endings. But it’s a very detailed story. Uncomfortably so, in fact. And I don’t know for sure, but I believe I told it to Delilah once. She was very insistent about asking me about Tyvian folklore in the beginning.”

            “You think it’s an actual ritual of some sort, and Delilah’s trying to perform it?”

            “Hellbent on changing the world would have been a better way of describing it,” he murmured, half to himself. “Yes. I think she’s trying to replicate the success of the mad painter. Probably without having her heart eaten in the end, if she even believes that part of the story. Shit, Tyvia’s always been spiteful, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that ending _was_ tacked onto a much older story.”

            “But she’s the Empress of Dunwall; why would she need to paint things real?”

            Anton gave her a long, considering look. “Your Grace, with all due respect, there is no such thing as ‘enough’ power.”

            “I suppose not.” She sat on the edge of the bed, her shoulders slumping forward, hands folded in her lap. “I just—if she had just come to me and said she was my aunt—I would have—” she sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t have believed her.”

            “Hey.” Anton leaned forward so that he could put a large hand on her head. “This isn’t your fault, Emily.”

            “If I’d listened to you…”

            He shrugged. “Then Piero and I would probably have still been in Dunwall Tower when Delilah took control of it. I doubt we’d have done that much better under those circumstances. One or both of us might _actually_ be dead now.” He looked down at Piero’s sleeping face and tried to forget the way the laudanum bottle had pulled at him when he thought he’d never see that face again. “Let’s not get caught on what-ifs, let’s deal with what we’ve got here. It’s shit, fine. We’ve dealt with shit before. At least this time you’re old enough to help.”

            That got a brief smile. “I helped when I was ten,” Emily informed him. “Or are you forgetting the _ten thousand coins_ you two got to help with your research?”

            “Never, Your Grace’s generosity is burned into my mind,” Anton said, deadpan. Emily laughed and slapped his hand lightly. He leaned back, loosening his collar and frowning. “Right, okay. We have an idea of Delilah’s goals. The next step is to figure out what the shit to _do_ about it.” He wished he had a chalkboard in here, but there wasn’t room to drag the one in from the larger room outside, and he wasn’t willing to leave Piero’s side.

            “I don’t suppose we can rely on the White Lady to show up and rip _Delilah’s_ heart out?”

            “The Lady in White,” he corrected absently. “And, no, I wouldn’t think so. Certain rituals are known that supposedly compel or supplicate the Outsider in Dunwall, but there is no evidence that I have ever found of similar Tyvian ones. Not functional ones, I mean, there’s plenty of fucking rituals _intended_ to do the same for the Ladies or the Lords, not that they’ve ever been worth shit when it comes to Tyvian interests.” Emily put a hand out and rested it gently on his, and Anton wondered what his face looked like. It was an old, familiar, bitter rut, and he shook himself out of it easily enough. “Delilah’s clearly using rituals, though, and those require precision. Disrupting them somehow probably isn’t impossible.”

            Emily’s expression changed as he watched. At first, Anton thought she was mulling over his statement; then he realized that she was cocking her head as if she were listening to something. “What is it?” he asked, but went quiet when Emily held up a finger.

            “It’s Mother,” she reported quietly after a moment. “I can never hear her well when I’m awake, it’s all a weird jumble.”

            Anton leaned forward. Piero had once, with great reluctance, given him what information he could about the construction of Corvo’s mask and let him listen to the short audiograph he had made about the— _other_ —item he had created for the Royal Protector. They did not speak about that much. Anton boiled with a desperate need to know more, and yet, for once, he did not want to ask. Even after fifteen years, the memory was still too fresh: he had been awake until the early hours of the morning burying himself in his research, had finally fallen into his bed almost sick with liquor, and had woken to perform the autopsy, only to find that, once again, the Watch had failed entirely in their duties. The tower had been broken into again, and not even Jessamine’s corpse saved from indignity.             Anton remembered staring down at her, her eyes shut, the wound in her sternum swallowed by the rent that had been made postmortem. It had not bled, that second injury, but whoever had made it had stripped her shirt off and left it behind, perhaps interrupted at a bad time, perhaps just careless, and her body had been hurriedly tucked back in the preserving ice.

            He had remained professional at first, ordering the guards to leave the room with ferocious detachment and gently laying her out on the slab. It was when he found that her ribs had been cracked and leveraged out of position to reach the organ beyond that he could no longer hide behind the mask of physician, and he dropped to a nearby chair and sobbed into his hands, barely able to stop himself from throwing up.

            And now he had the horrible feeling that Emily held her mother’s heart in her back pocket. Anton scrubbed at his eyes, gritted his teeth, and tried, once again, to shunt all the weariness riding in his shoulders and back into somewhere unnoticeable until he had more time to deal with it.

            “Mother says she and Piero will be there with me—if I go to the tower. I think.”

            How encouraging. Anton had been hedging around this, because he didn’t think they were likely to get a much better plan than “get into the tower and disrupt the ritual,” now that Delilah’s allies and supplies had been mitigated, but that grated. It was risky, it was rash, and it lacked finesse. But sometimes you just couldn’t predict the outcome of an experiment without more data. And if they were playing a game of chess here, Piero had just been revealed as the pawn that had reached the end of the board, which meant that Delilah would be coming for him.

            “Right, well,” he sighed. “Meagan and I can take you to Dunwall in the _Wale_. You know what you’re looking for; Piero can help you disrupt it. You should get some sleep.”

            “So should you,” Emily pointed out; Anton waved a hand airily at her, then caught himself yawning.

            “Fuck,” he said. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll get Meagan to take over for a few hours. I’ll need to be awake so I can adjust Piero’s dosage tomorrow. I know you need him, but I’m concerned about the strain this is putting on him.” Once, years ago, Piero had undergone the worst fit Anton had observed in him before or since. The fever had raged through him, confining him to his bed for nearly a week, completely insensate, and even the strongest dosage of nerve tonic had been useless in calling him back to himself. Anton himself had not slept over nearly the entire period, determined not to leave his side, almost despairing as Piero’s pulse grew weaker and weaker daily, as his eyes remained shut and his body twisted into horribly painful looking contortions.

            Even after the fever released him—for no reason that either of them had ever been able to determine—he had taken another several weeks to convalesce, left weak and trembling from the force of it. Now, years later, he was willingly undergoing something similar. The laudanum extract seemed to be protecting him from the worst of the muscular symptoms, but Anton could not countenance the continuation of this experiment for more than another few days. There was little use in regaining Dunwall if they lost Piero in trying. Guilt warred with practicality in Anton over this particular point. He comforted himself with the thought that Piero probably felt the same about him and therefore it was not an entirely hypocritical stance.

            “Do what you think is best,” Emily told him. “I don’t want to lose Uncle Peter anymore than you do.” She laughed a little self-deprecatingly at her slip of the tongue, referring to an old nickname for Piero she had starting using when she was a child and he was still officially the Royal Tutor.

            “Right. Good.” Anton rose to his feet, groaning at the pain in his back. He reached out an arm and awkwardly pulled Emily into a half-embrace, using his other hand to ruffle her hair. “If we die tomorrow, let’s make sure to tell the Outsider to go fuck himself on the way out.”

            Emily grinned at him. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”


	11. Edge of Chaos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroes confront Delilah.

_There is a transition between shapes for which the chaos game results in a pattern rather than a featureless smear of dots. This may be thought of as an edge or boundary region, separating order from disorder. – Piero Joplin, Procedure for the Chaos Game_

            Piero picks his way along behind Jessamine, still unsure how to react to the wraith-like figure at the former Empress’s shoulder whose hand is attached to Jessamine’s by a thin, supple white cord that shimmers strangely in the blue light. Everything has taken on a curious unreal quality, as if he were wading through a white mist behind them, and somewhere, far away, he can feel the press of a large hand against his own. Anton must have lowered the dosage of laudanum, and, even if Piero thinks that such a decision is unwise, he cannot deny that he is grateful. He doesn’t want to die here, doesn’t want to feel his connection to that warm and living body—so far away for so long—snap and leave him to go mad, quite alone.           

            Jessamine looks back at him; the figure at her side makes no motion to follow her gaze. “We’re close to the tower,” she tells him. Piero can sense no difference in the white-blue emptiness around them, but Jessamine has so many years more experience than he that he has no doubt she is correct.

            In a few moments, a soft hum begins to percolate through the air around them, disquieting and disconcerting. The ground beneath their feet turns to worked stone rather than the rough, jutting crags they have been crossing, then to dark glass. They come to a staircase rising upwards, the obsidian of the stairs so highly polished that Piero can see his own pale face reflected with minimal distortions in their surface. He flinches away from it, and watches Jessamine instead. She is heavy and solid, almost as real-looking as Emily was when he saw her last, in sharp contrast to the pale, wavering figure at her side.

            At the top of the stairs is a rectangular opening. At first, as they approach, Piero has the odd impression of a painting hanging in nothingness, but parallax soon gives the lie to that assumption: he can see the location on the other side shifting as they move. It is only when they approach more closely that he recognizes the rich red hangings of the main hall of Dunwall tower. He halts in confusion, almost stumbling over his own feet. “Wh-What?” he stammers. Jessamine pauses as well, but the figure at her side continues walking. The thin connection between the two of them stretches.

            As Delilah’s ghostly shadow takes another step, the outline of the opening flares with bright azure light. A chalk outline on the wide, circular platform in front of it that Piero did not see until now also blazes with bright light. There is a stomach-churning sensation of tilting as the platform seems to tip upward in front of Piero’s eyes, and then he realizes that it is not the platform but the outline, and it is not so much tipping up as pulling itself up into the third dimension. And up. And _up_.

            Piero’s eyes widen. The behemoth in front of them is vaguely avian in shape, with a long, toothy beak covered in bright glowing runes. It writhes, undulating slowly in space, the vast emptiness between its fleshless ribs almost as disquieting as the small boney hands with which it blindly fumbles at the space before it. In the sudden hush, it shakes itself, sending a rattling, clacking wave down the unconnected knobs of its spine, and then it screeches, the tooth-chatteringly painful noise of nails on a chalkboard. Twin motes of light glow deep within the sunken sockets of its slim skull.

            “Outsider’s _piss_!” gasps Jessamine. “What is _that_?”

            Piero has no response for her. He is barely able to grasp the scale of the thing that rises before them, and he is frozen to the spot by its cry and the evil glitter in its eyes, which are fixed very directly on him. He can no longer feel Anton’s hand in his, can no longer feel anything but the reverberation of that horrible shriek. He knows he must move, but he can do nothing as the creature rises lazily and begins stroking its way down towards him.

            _This is the end_ , he thinks with sudden, awful clarity. Here they are, his last moments, laid out before him like the last beads on a broken necklace before they drop to the ground. Jessamine is wrestling with the shadow at her side, trying to drag her away down the steps, but Piero can do nothing but stare. The boney beak clacks, and the air of the Void whistles through the hollow eye sockets. The beak widens; it will soon snap home around Piero’s body, crushing ribs, lungs, and heart or the spiritual equivalent. He does not know if there will be blood here, but there will be blood on the _Dreadful Wale_ : Anton will watch it bubble from Piero’s lungs and foam from his mouth as he enters one last, ghastly seizure. Anton will cry his name, Piero knows. He will try first the nerve tonic, then a stimulant. Perhaps, in the end, some King Street Brandy, if any remains on board. Nothing will do any good; Piero will turn blue and choke and die without ever waking, and Anton will stare down blankly, empty even of tears, muttering Tyvian curses—perhaps pleas as well. And he will never know what happened. Somehow, that hurts the most of all.

            The beak lunges. Piero cannot even shut his eyes. Then something lands on his waist, and he is moving, dragged sideways by the sudden grip. The beak closes on empty air with a thunderous clack. For a moment the Void slides dizzily past, and then Piero slams backward into a slim form who staggers but manages to take his weight and shift him onto his feet without either of them falling over.

            “Are you all right?” Emily asks urgently.

            “I, ah, yes. Thank you.” The pressure of Anton’s hand has returned insistently and suddenly, and Piero feels as if he could weep. Instead, he looks back to where the skeletal being is rearing up in confusion. Jessamine is still struggling down the stairs, while her unwelcome companion tries to hang back. “I think you had better help your mother,” Piero says.

            Beside him, there is a soft noise as Emily pulls her blade from her belt and snaps it into its lengthened position. Her other hand reaches out—and keeps reaching. Piero watches dizzily as her arms stretches like rubber, questing for the beast’s back, and then she has hooked her fingers into the knobs of its spine and is bouncing forward. As she does, her form splits in two, then into three. Three dark shadows land, and three bright swords flash, sending up sparks as they ring against bone. The creature rears back in awful silence, opening its beak-like jaw as if crying out, but no noise is forthcoming.

            All the same, Piero takes a short step back in response to the rearing motion, just in time for the great head to swing around and spot him again. This time, Piero’s legs move when he tells them to, and he’s running—in no particular direction, just running, trying to keep ground underfoot and every moment fearing another attack from the silent monster at his back. The only thing that tells him where it is are the repeated clashing noises from the attacks of Emily and her two shadows.

            He cannot simply run. This monster of chalk and bone that Emily is fighting—it is enormous. Even with the two summoned helpers, she cannot hope to do any serious damage without finding a weak point. _Chalk and bone_. The thing rose from something etched into the ground, did it not?

            The thought is enough to turn Piero’s trajectory in a long looping spiral back towards the top of the steps, past Jessamine and the wraithlike figure of Delilah, up to where the behemoth swirls in ever tighter circles, its mouth opening in a silent cry as Emily grimly clings to the links of its back and hacks away.

            It is the motion that finally tells him what it is that he is looking at, the strange, wide curling turns and the undulation of the tapering spine propelling it upwards as it tries to escape from the pinpricks Emily and her doppelgangers are dealing out. He has seen that motion before, the thrashing generally accompanied by a maddened, pained bellow and the steady drip or gush of bright, shining blue. It is a _whale_ , skin stripped from its bones as if it has been devoured by rats, and that realization nearly stops Piero in his tracks.

            Somehow, he forces himself to continue upwards, hoping desperately that it is distracted enough that it will not sense his approach. His breathing is loud in his ears, and he is not sure where those breaths come from, if they puff from his memory of his lungs or if his real lungs are pumping this hard. The brush of a hand against his forehead is almost distracting, but he manages to push onwards.

            The chalk etching is still there on the round platform at the top of the stairs. It glows with a blue so bright that Piero is forced to shield his eyes and squint sideways through his lashes to be able to get an idea of the form of the markings. What he sees when he does so is a rectangle, precisely placed such that the light filtering in through the rectangular opening at the top of the stairs would precisely illuminate it, were it not already so bright that it illuminates the entire location. Around that rectangle there is another, slightly larger, and a complex set of runes is inscribed between the two of them. At the bottom—the side closest to Piero and farthest from the base of the rectangular opening—a trifold bone charm lies sunk into the obsidian beneath. Into the center of each of the other sides is set a familiar-looking ovoid glass lens.

            The rectangle is focusing a spell of some sort, that much is clear. Piero thinks he could understand the complexity of the pattern beneath, if he had time. It is of a piece with the triangle game, with the harmonics he designed for the second-generation arc pylon. It is a deep, deep curve in the universe, a repeating rut into which all flows must eventually fall, and standing here on the edge, he is so infuriatingly close to seeing it—but he _has_ no time. Above him, the skeletal whale has completed another circuit, and now it has sighted him. Ignoring whatever Emily is still attempting to do on its back, it angles its cartilage-less fins such that it is drifting towards him once more.

            No more time for fear or hesitation. Piero throws himself at the central bone charm and scrabbles at it, trying to dislodge it, but it is sunk deep; worse, it is giving off heat in pulsing waves, and he has to snatch his hand back before it is burned. Tugging one sleeve down to protect himself, he tries again, but he has no leverage. An impossible feat to perform, to dislodge a puzzle piece from its perfect resting place without time or instruments.

            The whale screeches again, the sound of bone rasping upon bone fearfully loud. Piero curses, feeling in his pockets for something, anything—and his hands close upon the lens. The focusing device. The power source. There is a whoosh of displaced air and then a horrendous crunching noise; he pays it no heed. Instead, he takes two steps sideways to the nearest lens and brings his heel down.

            It isn’t enough. He doesn’t have the angle for it, nor the strength. The lens is set in a little recessed cavity, and all he does is hurt his heel. A weapon might do it, but Piero has no weapon, and Emily is too far away to hear a cry for help. The lens is a frustrating concave weight in his pocket, the edge pressing painfully into his fingers as he tightens his hand around it.

            And he does not know if the idea hits his brain before his hand moves or after, but he plucks the lens from his pocket and places it on the ground over the other and once again grinds down with his heel. The concave belly of it is forced into the unreachable curve of the other. There is a very soft noise of shattering.

            A grunt by Piero’s ear forces him to look up. Jessamine is directly behind him, holding in both hands a long, ragged shard of stone like a club above her head. The whale is gnawing and snapping at it like a wolfhound trying to wrest a bone away from someone’s grasp, but even as he watches, the rippling blue runes are fading in places, one or two of the spinal knobs decoupling from the others and clattering to the ground beneath. Jessamine grunts, her back pressed into his. Piero takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes, and brings his heel down heavily again.

            There is no responding sound, although it feels as if there should be. This single, final gesture has taken so much effort that he is almost offended that the universe should fail to recognize it, despite the futility of ascribing such motives to the uncaring void about them. Then Jessamine staggers away from him, and he counts two heartbeats before he can force himself to turn and look.

            The whale is falling from the sky, and the lights in its eyes are gone. Bones rain down around them; the tail and spine go first, and Piero crouches, trying to protect his head with his hands. Something crunches into the ground beside him, and he flinches. And then the dust is clearing, and Jessamine and Emily are picking themselves up, and the creature is gone. Piero sits down heavily and puts his head in his hands. When he looks up, he realizes that one of the ribs fell just beside him; had it been an inch or two off from its current position, he would probably have been crushed.

            “Oh sh-sh-shit,” Piero says. He is positive his legs will not be able to carry him right now.

            “Mother?” Emily says in a very small voice. The two Kaldwin women are staring at one another. Beside them, Delilah’s form wavers like smoke, pulsing dark red, but she still does not speak. Piero is not certain how aware she is of her surroundings even now.

            “Emily,” Jessamine gulps, and she takes two steps forward and enfolds her daughter in her arms.

            “Oh, Mother.” Piero shifts in embarrassment, looking away from their reunion and finds himself looking at Delilah once again. The expression on her blurry face is dark, but Piero does not think it is rage that smolders darkly behind those translucent eyes. Instead, her face is a picture of naked longing, the expression that Piero knows he felt settle on his face years ago when he occasionally slipped back to the Academy grounds and watched the students from afar. He thinks of the desperate child he saw begging on the streets in the paintings Delilah showed to Emily, and he is rather inclined to believe that they were not a lie.

            “How can I be here?” Emily asks, and Piero realizes that they are both looking at him again.           

            Frowning, he runs a hand through his remaining hair, resettles his spectacles on his nose. “Some sort of spell, that much is obvious.” Perhaps now it is time to investigate the chalk etchings more closely.

            “Anton said he thought that she was trying to mimic a Tyvian fairytale about the mad painter of Dabokva,” Emily informs him, and Piero nods absently as he gets slowly to his feet.

            The etchings are no longer glowing, although without that brilliance overpowering the scene, Piero can see a slight glow limning the rectangular doorway into the Tower. Curious, he prods a finger at it. There is no change in sensation; his finger merely enters the air in Dunwall Tower as if he were in truth standing before a normal doorway. Piero feels a shiver run down his back. That cannot be good; it bespeaks a connection at an exceptionally deep level, and while he does not know exactly what the repercussions might be of the Void bleeding into reality, he is in no hurry to find out.

            Backing away from the portal, he turns his attention to the quiescent rectangle with its central bone charm and two intact lenses. He is neither magician nor occultist, but living with Anton has given him a working knowledge of rituals, and, as always, there is the innate sense he has for the shape of such things, a sense that frightens him most of the time, that he rarely attempts to hone or use. But you cannot live with Anton for long without picking up something. And you cannot spend fifty years dreaming in scraps of blue without some understanding worming its way in.

            These are runes for creation woven in with runes for destruction, a skillful tapestry Piero knows he himself could never have composed with such artistry. He is forced to admire the care and cleverness, even as he is horrified by the implications. The chalk drawing of the whale in the center of the rectangle is quiescent now, but he knows that if the lens were replaced, it would rise again, as mindless and ferocious as ever. There are runes here that not even he recognizes, although he can guess at their use from the overall effect and the placement with respect to other, more familiar ones.

            “This is not my area of expertise,” he says slowly, as Jessamine and Emily peer over his shoulder. “Emily, would you do me a favor and tell me what is framing that?” He indicates the oblong hanging in the air. It seems as if he could exit and observe himself, but for once his desire for understanding is outweighed by his horror of the possible repercussions for such an act.

            Emily nods slowly, and Piero bends once more over the runes that he can see. Something about the structure is nagging at him. The way the bone charm and the lenses are sunk into the ground, at least an inch below the runes carved over them—is that really necessary? Frowning, he digs in his pocket for a handkerchief to protect his hand, and then he carefully begins working the fragments of the two shattered lenses out of their recess. It is sensitive work, but after a moment, he feels something shifting beneath his fingertips. He extracts five shards from the two lenses; as he takes out the last one, he feels something thin and sharp brush against the back of his nails.

            Working his fingers around into the side of the gap left by the lens he has removed, he finds the tips closing around what feels very much like the edge of another lens. It takes him a moment or two to tease it out, but eventually he manages, by dint of jiggling his fingers back and forth, to first loosen and then pull out another lens. A careful probe satisfies him that, yes, there is a lens next to this one as well. He sits back on his heels, considering. The probability is high that there is a full ring of lenses beneath the runic circle.

            Why would such a ring be necessary? A single lens would surely suffice as a focusing device. Then it seems the lenses are not performing as merely focuses; they are an active part of this spell. There must be something here he still does not understand about them.

            “It looks like a painting,” Emily’s voice says by his ear, and he jerks, startled. She moves as silently as Corvo, now, “but there is a bone charm above it and there are three lenses visible around it, just like the runic circle here, I suppose.”

            Clicking his tongue in frustration, Piero rises to investigate the oblong from this side of it. A close inspection shows him that the three lenses that Emily described are also visible as round apertures on this side; little transparent windows from one realm to another, though they are solid beneath his fingers when he probes at them, unlike the painting itself. The bone charm he can detect only by the heat that emanates from it.

            Frowning, he holds up one of the lens that he collected from the runic circle and peers through it. As before, one side of it is a dull, matte grey, whereas the other shows him another empty, rocky scree surrounded by blue. He sets it down and takes up the next: matte grey on one side, but the other—this is the throne room of Dunwall Tower that Piero is peering into, where Delilah is leaning forward and touching the last few strokes to a vast landscape. Power crackles around the frame. They are almost out of time.

            “We must keep moving,” Piero says tersely, forcing himself to his feet and tucking the handful of lenses into his pocket. “We are out of time.”

            Emily’s eyes search for Jessamine’s, and the former Empress gives the current one’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “Let’s go save Dunwall,” Jessamine says.

            Piero and Jessamine travel on one side of reality; Emily travels on the other. Although loathe to leave her mother, she bows to the necessity of having someone certain of what is happening inside the tower itself, and Piero and Jessamine can see only glimpses. They make their way up a spiral staircase of dull black stone that is isolated except for the occasional painted window into Dunwall Tower. Emily seems to flit from frame to frame.

            As they go, Piero turns the lenses over in his hands, his mind working furiously. There is a simple logic behind them that he is only now beginning to grasp. The side that shows nothing must do so because the light that passes in from one side does not pass out the other side in the same location. If you look through them one way, you see light from a distant location, and if you are in the Void, that distance seems to become illusion. Whether that would be the case with a lens passing the light from the real world, Piero does not know, and there is no time to test it.

            The lenses are not the power sources for the runic circles; they are the directions. They are the circuit, the wires; the blood, not the bone. They must direct the flow of magic as they direct the flow of light. That is how the lens in the Heart works, diverting the magic from the Heart’s bearer into its own beating. But the Heart is a finite vessel and can contain only finite power. If the lenses that were part of a machine such as the Oraculum were twisted so that they directed the power to an infinite vessel—so that the magic simply poured empty into nothingness, with no way to stop—then the result would be a magic-draining effect. There is no way to prove such a hypothesis, but it at least fits with what Piero has seen, and there is no time left for anything more sophisticated than educated guessing.

            They pass another bone guardian, but this time, forewarned, it does not slow them down much; Jessamine distracts it while Piero crushes another lens, disrupting the circle again. Emily arrives, panting, as the bones are already raining down around them. “Well, fuck me,” she says. Then, “good job.”

            Jessamine’s eyes crinkle. “I see you’ve been spending time with Anton,” she says; Emily brushes the hair back from her forehead and laughs in turn.

            “I wish we had more time,” she says.

            “So do I. But no matter what happens, remember that I am so very proud of you, my darling.”

            Emily pauses at the edge of the frame; her smile is somehow heartbreaking. She doesn’t even speak again, she just nods and smiles and keeps smiling.

            There is no aperture into the throne room. The rising stairs end in a tumble of rocks and twisting the lens shows Piero that Delilah is still in the Dunwall Throne Room. She is now affixing a bone charm to the top of the painting, and he can see the dark wood framed within it beginning to move, thorny branches twining out to the edges of the painting. They have no time left.

            Piero reaches out and grasps Jessamine’s hand and does not flinch at all. “We must go quickly,” he tells her. He raises the lens to his eye and does not let himself think about what may happen as they step forward.

            The transition this time makes the hairs stand up on the back of his arms and neck, a sudden tingle like the potential field surrounding a large amount of trans. His vision blurs for a moment as he takes the lens away from his eye, and he staggers dizzily. Something blurs dark across a part of his vision he should not be able to see, and Emily appears suddenly behind Delilah. She is holding Jessamine’s heart in one hand, and Piero turns to the side to see that Jessamine and the faint figure at her side are pulsating with a beat that seems to resound in his own temples.

            Several things happen at once. Delilah finishes slotting the bone charm into place; Emily reaches out futilely to jog her arm; the Heart flares with white fire. Piero begins to edge his way around the room even as dark branches creep outward from the frame of the painting. A circlet of thorns, thin as the strokes of a paintbrush, fades into existence on Delilah’s brow. Emily dances frantically to the side, barely evading the reach of a nearby thorny vine that writhes as rapidly as a tentacle.

            Piero shakes his head and reorients. There is one thing and only one he can help with, and that is the three-dimensional construction in the center of the floor before the painting. He would call it a runic circle, but circle implies a two-dimensional shape, and this is far from two-dimensional. Perhaps it is not even properly three-dimensional. The intricate whorls and turns of the glittering glass put Piero in mind of a snowflake or the inner workings of the arc pylon, and he has sometimes wondered whether such a shape, if taken to its logical conclusion, would truly constitute a three-dimensional shape. The surface area does not seem to behave the way he would intuitively expect it to, but he has no time for such deep speculation now.

            There is a visible traversal of light in the glass construction ahead, forming a pattern that Piero can tell is similar to the pattern of the runic circle that brought forth the bone whale, although it is far more complex. Piero kneels beside it, studying it, tracing the directions of the light with his fingers in the air. It is somewhat difficult to concentrate with the distorted snippets of the scene on the other side, but he tries his best.

            Jessamine’s form has vanished, or perhaps she is simply no longer in his field of view. He catches a sudden, far-too-close view of the Heart, filtered through the strange web of light sources in front of him. It is blackened and burnt, the lens on its front the only thing that fire still flickers on. Even as he watches, it peels away into nothingness, resembling nothing so much as ash dissolving into the air. He hears Delilah shriek in rage, and he forces himself to follow the design in front of him once again.

            Patterns have always been something Piero understands intuitively, especially in the blue of his dreams. Although he can feel the grip of the laudanum waning, he still retains that special sharp lucidity. And if a pattern is to have an impression on the universe, it must be understandable, must it not? He does not need to be able to design his own circle to understand how to rewire an existent one.

            He can simply twitch one lens and the entire pattern will be destroyed, but it would be easy enough for Delilah to recreate it if she succeeds in defeating them; such a solution would be temporary, at best. He chews thoughtfully on his thumb as he squints around at the painting that sprawls on the far wall. In addition to the clawing black branches that wave out of the interior, he can see that it depicts a perfect mirror of the throne room, except that instead of dust and the beginnings of decay, there are rich red hangings and carpeting. Servants stand beside luxuriously caparisoned nobles; they are all smiling and murmuring together. Beyond, outside, green trees groan under the weight of colorful fruit. There are no guards. The only thing that mars the platonic peacefulness of the scene is the figure of the Royal Protector kneeling before the empty throne with his head down, stripped to the waist, a collar about his neck.

            Piero shivers as he sees that a second collar lies empty beside the first. And that is when he realizes he can no longer feel Anton’s hand on his. That is when he realizes that the edges of this room bleed off into the blue of nothingness. Whalesong rises, sharp and discordant, and the fuzz of the laudanum is utterly absent. The world has inverted. The world has _changed_ , according to Delilah’s whims, and only Piero and Emily stand in the way of it being permanent.

            Horror thrills Piero to his core, because what has become of Anton? What has become of Meagan, Mistress Hypatia, Mistress Bentham, Cecelia, Callista…what has become of the world? For once in his life, Piero wishes for nothing more than for the Outsider to rise from the depths beneath, black eyes sparkling, and set the world spinning—but Delilah is connected to the Outsider, that much they know, whether his favored or, more likely, his jailer. Piero thinks of the boy’s body with its mouth stitched shut floating in the marsh while Delilah presses her mouth to his throat and drinks his blood. There can be no help for them that way.

            There is only him, and there is only the pattern. Piero empties his mind of everything, shooing to the side the jangle of whalesong in his bones, the fear rising in his gut, the sight of Emily sparring with thorny brambles and barely managing to avoid their grasp. Leave all that aside. All that is relevant is the way the light thrums through the sculpture before him.

            The light is captured and twists and turns around the surface, through lens after lens, entering from the painting and then following its tortuous route to reach a final full grate of lenses that scatter it across everything. Piero follows the route and follows it again; it tangles and twists into that strange shape that seems to draw a pattern out of the air itself and then he follows it once more and spots it. The whole thing is almost entirely symmetric, but there is a single cluster of lenses near the center that break that symmetry; that direct the light from one side to the other in a particular direction. If those lenses are reversed, the entire thing will be reversed. He wishes he had more time to study this device, partly because it is fascinating, and partly because he would like to be certain that his hypothesis is correct, but there is no time. He looks up in time to see Emily, in the painting now, stumble. Brambles curl about her body and twine up her torso.

            Piero reaches for the central lens. As soon as his fingers touch it, Delilah’s head snaps up, focus shifting from Emily to him. “Don’t,” she snarls. The tentacle contracts briefly about Emily, then tosses her to the side like a rag doll. She tumbles out of the painting and crashes against the side of the throne. “I will rip your heart from your chest.”

            Piero sighs. “I know,” he says, and he flips the lens a half-turn about. The very air itself seems to shudder. He supposes he should feel fearful, but all he feels now is a cold sense of loss and frustration. All he has ever wanted is to be left alone with his work, and, more recently, with his husband. And yet somehow he always seems to be swept up in grand, epic adventures. At least, with the shift, he can once again feel Anton’s hand about his. That is some comfort.

            Delilah cries out, and the dark tentacle whips towards Piero. He makes an effort to fight against the effects of the laudanum that have crashed back down, but he knows the dosage is not so low yet that he will be able to pull himself out of sleep. Damn.

            Just before he judges the tentacle should impact him, it crashes into something else. Piero blinks in surprise and some relief.

            “Delilah,” Jessamine pants. “Don’t do this. You’ve lost. Just accept that.” The thorns must be digging deeply into her arm and side, but she shows no pain; no blood oozes from what must be deep puncture wounds.

            “Ah, the wise former Empress, here to remonstrate with me on behalf of those she favors. Such a pity her care does not extend to those of her own blood.”

            “I’m sorry.” Jessamine’s voice is steady, although to Piero’s ears it seems to fade in and out. Someone else is calling his name. “I’m sorry, Delilah, what was done to you—it was terrible. I lied. You paid the price. But Emily has done nothing to you. Corvo has done nothing to you. Piero and Anton and most of the people of the Empire have done _nothing_ to you, so what gives you the right to work your vengeance upon _them_?”

            “I am _owed_ a crown!”

            “The world owes you nothing; the crown is not mine to give you any longer. And is that even what you really want? You’ve had Emily’s crown for months now.”

            “The world is dark and terrible and cruel. The Outsider does not care. No one cares. I—” Delilah stands blinking, her hands loosening at her sides. “I would make it less terrible,” she says, suddenly quiet. To Piero’s eyes, her form seems to waver as if in a heat haze.

            “Not like this.” Jessamine shakes her head, and now Piero sees that the black tentacular branch is changing form. Green buds sprout along it; little twigs twist outward and upward, blossoming into a pattern that repeats itself smaller and smaller until he can no longer make it out, a pattern that, perhaps, goes on to infinity. The whole room sways and shimmers; for a moment, Anton’s concerned face floats in the air above him.

            Piero tries to reach for him, but his limbs are frozen.

            “I could have _done it_ ,” Delilah rages. “No one ever believed in me!”

            “The world needs to make its own way,” Jessamine says gently. “There is no one person who can make everything right for everyone.”

            “But less terrible,” Delilah argues stubbornly. “There are so many things that could be _better_. Now that I have the crown. Now that I have my due.” There is a terrible madness lurking behind her dark eyes, and it comes to Piero that the fearful thing about it is not that she is mad, but that he knows the root of the madness. When she came to the end of her vengeance, when she took her Empire back—what did she have left? She has found another thing to work for, but it is so terrible and vast Piero can scarcely countenance it. And yet, he understands it.

            To have one’s due; to give each and every other person their due as well. It is a simple logic; it is how the world ought to work. How can he say that he would rather have his life now than his due, when that is all down to luck? Yet Piero knows that if he had had his due when he desired it, if he had followed that logic—it would have all gone wrong. Even if Anton were not—who he is—it would never have felt right. He would not have understood what was wrong, and he would have kept trying to find his way to the end of that feeling, but he would never have succeeded. The madness that glitters in Delilah’s eyes now—it frightens him. He knows with awful certainty that there is some probability splinter out there in the Void where that same madness glitters in Piero’s eyes.

            “If I had not believed you could change the world, I would not have stopped you,” Piero says, and Delilah’s eyes turn to him, questioning. He is shaking as he rises to his feet. “B-But I l-like the world.”

            “Delilah,” Jessamine says, in a raw voice. “Why not make your perfect world for _you_? Instead of worrying about everyone else? You can’t make someone else’s world for them, but—you could—you could still—I would come with you. I _missed_ you.” Her voice is suddenly higher, almost childish. “I—I _asked_ them where you had gone. I asked the spymaster. I asked Father. I—no one would tell me.” She looks down. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I don’t know how I feel about you now or how you feel about me, but I know how I felt then, even if I was a coward. I loved you.”

            He sees the words, _What choice do I have?_ hover on Delilah’s lips, and then she shakes her head, squeezing her eyes together. “My mother,” she says brokenly, and her voice is suddenly a little girl’s voice, pleading, high and hollow. “You can’t give me back my mother.”

            “But I can give you back your sister. Paint us something beautiful. Please.”

            There is a wind howling about them, swirling from the high, dark throne and catching in the branches of the tree that is still growing, shifting Piero slowly away from Jessamine as it does. He can feel the bone charm set into the frame of the painting like an ember burning in the back of his mind. The world seems to invert, and it is no longer a wind howling outward but the inward sweeping motion of air into a vacuum.

            Anton’s voice is shouting his name, and Piero can finally feel the bed beneath him. The laudanum is leaving his veins, not a moment too soon. Jessamine glances back. Her gaze catches his, and she smiles; her face is oddly peaceful. Then her eyes slide past, and her mouth opens in a soft _O_.

            Piero turns to follow her look, and the last thing he sees before the image shimmers and dissipates is Corvo’s startled gaze. He is holding the limp form of Emily in his arms, and dark blood stains the side of her coat and the hand with which he supports her. _Jessamine_ , Corvo’s lips form, and then, finally, it all breaks apart.


	12. Aletheia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Piero wakes up, and some secrets are revealed.

_If you do not want the Tyvian ambassador to complain about lack of reverence, just do not tell him things that he will complain about. Truth does not require the revelation of all secrets. – letter from Anton Sokolov to Jessamine Kaldwin, 1827_

            Agony splintered through Piero’s head, and he moaned. His vision was blue from side to side, and there was an insistent rocking beneath him.

            “Can you hear me? Fuck, what’s the use.”

            “A-Anton?” The word came out of his mouth muffled and distorted, but he was relatively confident that it was comprehensible.

            The response was an exclamation his tired ears could not parse. A hand felt for his pulse. “Blood’s not doing badly,” Anton’s voice said. “Can you open your eyes for me?”

            He was staring at the inside of his own eyelids. At some point, the blue had changed to a more customary colored static. His eyelids were heavy and coated in sandy grit, but, if he made an effort, he was able to open his eyes a crack.

            Light speared in, and he shut them again with a groan of pain. “It’s—bright,” he managed.

            “Some light sensitivity is to be expected,” Anton told him. “You have had your eyes shut for far longer than I would have found to be advisable.”

            Piero searched his mind. He recalled the clinging sensation of the laudanum holding him down, but beyond that—mere flashes. The face of Empress Jessamine, a huge monster made of bone, a black tree always at his back. “What happened?” he wheezed. “Did we—is it safe?”

            “Emily’s up in Dunwall Tower,” Anton replied. Squinting his eyes open again, Piero could just make out his blurry form wiping the sweat from its forehead. “Let us hope she is successful. If not, I expect we’ll all end up executed for our trouble.”

            “At least we would be together,” Piero murmured. He had not forgotten the chilly fear that had gripped him when Anton had been taken right out from under his nose. The physical injury he had been left with had been trivial, easily mended, but the pain of losing his husband had lingered until he had nearly been sick with it. When Emily finally returned with him— _Emily_. An image floated up in front of Piero’s eyes—Emily, lying limp in her father’s arms, her side dark with blood.

            “Emily needs us,” he blurted. “We must—the Tower—she is injured.”

            Years ago, Anton might have wasted valuable time demanding to know how Piero could possibly know such a thing. Now there was merely a hiss of indrawn breath. “Can you stand?”

            “You go on ahead. Send Meagan to help me.” Piero managed to sit up, blinking dizzily against the harsh lights, but the world in front of his eyes was still blurry. His eyes were having difficulty focusing, which might be from not having done so in too long, or might simply be a leftover effect of the laudanum mixture. “You can walk all right?”

            “I’ll manage,” Anton retorted gruffly, then paused. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Ribs ache, but my breathing is much improved.”

            Piero caught at his hand momentarily; about to squeeze it, he brought it to his lips instead. Anton’s eyes widened slightly, and he turned back. For a moment, his arms were about Piero, pulling him upright and against him. Anton’s warmth burnt at his front; his lips were hot on Piero’s own. It was only a moment, but it was a moment long-needed, a swallow of water for a man dried out in a desert—it was not enough, but it would hold him until such time as Emily was safe.

            “Stay safe,” Anton told him, and then he was out the door. Piero sat weakly on the edge of the cot. The world spun, tilted, firmed. Meagan was at the door, and Piero frowned. Something about her appearance nagged at him, but his mind was still too full of confused impressions and the haziness of a long sleep to manage to put his finger on it.

            “Anton said Emily was in danger?” Meagan asked, and Piero nodded.

            “Yes. Injured, perhaps badly. We must reach her. Is Mistress Hypatia still here?”

            “I’ll fetch her as well. Can you stand?”

            “With support, I believe so.” In an instant, Meagan had her shoulder beneath his. With the steady pressure of it, he was able to totter to his feet, although it was clear his legs would not have been able to support his weight alone. Hypatia was already hovering on the deck, waiting for them; Anton must have summoned her.

            Their journey upwards was eerie. Dunwall Tower, which had bustled with life—to the extent that Piero had never felt entirely comfortable there—was silent. In many places, dust piled high on the furniture, and cobwebs hung on the corners of doorways. The only objects that did not show signs of serious neglect were the paintings that seemed to hang in almost every room, painted in startling vibrant colors.

            Passing them made Piero’s head ache and his vision swirl with an empty blue. After the third time this happened, he peered a little closer and shivered as he saw the bone charm set in the top of the frame. There was what looked as if it had been runework around the edges as well, but instead of glowing as functioning runes did, it had a dark, singed look. Whatever it had been intended to do, it no longer seemed to be functioning.

            As they mounted the stairs towards the top floor, they found signs of a few women who had apparently been on guard. They had been tucked away in unlikely locations to sleep off the effects of what was presumably a version of sleep drug not unlike those Piero had concocted on numerous occasions. Emily’s touch was evident in the way that, although the locations they were found were odd, they were generally posed in a such a way as to eliminate discomfort upon waking.

            Upon reaching the top floor, the illusion of emptiness was shattered by the sounds of a loud argument. “That is Anton,” Piero said, recognizing his husband’s voice immediately. Although his legs still felt rather weak, he began to move forward by himself, although Meagan hovered close behind.

            In the back of the throne room was the largest painting yet. Although Piero had not intended to let himself be distracted, his attention was still arrested for a moment by its contents. A vast dark tree spread from one side of the wall to the other. Although the lower branches held long, thin thorns, green buds sprouted from the higher ones, and sunlight dappled its branches. Beneath it sat two little girls, one in a white dress, the other in black. The girl in white cupped a flower between her hands, holding it out to the other. Both were smiling.

            Piero swallowed against a sudden, unbidden lump in his throat and turned his attention to the little knot of people beneath the painting. Anton stood to one side, gesturing angrily at a woman in Kaldwin blue, who had her arms crossed over her chest. Three exhausted people in the attire of Emily’s personal guard stood behind her, none of whom appeared to have slept in the past week or so. Between the two groups, looking harried, was Corvo Attano, kneeling beside Emily’s limp form. Her shirt had been removed; dark blood stained the white bandages that covered her side and arm.

            “For fuck’s sake, woman!” Anton was shouting. “She is dangerously anemic! You must allow me to perform a transfusion!”

            “I am the Royal Physician, and you will not perform such a risky procedure on the Empress!”

            “Attano, Void’s sake, man, your daughter is going to _die_!”

            “I’m not letting the two of you near her until you’ve stopped fighting,” Corvo was saying, although he sounded uncertain. Piero nearly fell over himself in his haste to get across the room. The image of a vast black tentacle wrapping about Emily swam before his eyes.

            “C-Corvo,” he stammered. “Anton. Um.” The woman in Kaldwin blue glared at him.

            “Amelia Ridgemore, Royal Physician,” she said stiffly.

            Piero blinked. The words, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” rose and exited his lips without much conscious thought on his part. Then he looked at Corvo again. “M-May I?”

            Corvo sighed, glared at the other two, and nodded minutely. “You can examine her. _Just_ that.”

            Piero knelt beside Emily, aware of the glare that the supposed Royal Physician was giving him. The Empress’s face was sallow, her breathing rough and short. A finger to her pulse told him her heart was beating rapidly, and a gentle nail pressed into the flesh showed a delayed response in the disappearance of the resulting dent. “I c-concur with Anton,” he said shortly. “H-Her condition is s-severe. A transfusion is necessary.”

            “ _Thank_ you,” Anton rumbled, his voice thick and accented.

            “There is a mortality rate of _fifty percent_ associated with the procedure you are describing!” Ridgemore objected.

            Corvo looked from her to Anton to Piero. “I can’t lose her,” he said quietly. “I—I can’t.”

            Anton pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. His other hand flexed unconsciously. “The mortality rate that your _Royal Physician_ is describing is associated with transfusion without checking for compatibility between blood types, which, yes, is not a procedure I would subject Emily to. However, transfusion between a _compatible_ donor and recipient has a much lower risk associated with it.”

            “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Ridgemore said loudly.

            “Then you’ve not been keeping up with the literature,” Anton snarled back. “I’ve written three papers on the subject in the past ten years.”

            Corvo looked from one to the other, looked to Piero, who nodded.

            “It is relatively recent work, but Anton is correct.”

            “But—” Ridgemore tried to speak again, but Corvo waved her to silence.

            “How do you tell a compatible donor?” he asked.

            For some reason, Anton sank into a sudden silence at the question, but Piero was quite happy to answer. “There is a simple test that can be performed. One simply mixes the bloods in an external vessel and watches for a reaction. If none is observed, then the types are compatible. In fact, the use of such a test—or one similar—is not limited to life-saving donations; it can also be used to distinguish among parental candidates due to certain patterns of inheritance observed first in root vegetables by Eran in his seminal work some years ago.” Anton was glaring at him. Piero was not sure why.

            “Test mine,” Corvo said urgently. “Wait—won’t that require _more_ blood from Emily?”

            “Well…” Piero hedged.

            “Don’t bother.” All eyes turned to Anton, whose voice was loud, blunt, and strangely, somehow, monotonous. Piero could not understand what had happened. The energy that had lifted Anton a mere moment ago, as he argued with Ridgemore, had left him. His shoulders slumped, his head bowed forward, his eyes shadowed: he seemed suddenly ancient. “I’m a compatible donor.”

            Corvo blinked at him. “But you’ll be needed to perform the transfusion, won’t you? Can you test mine anyway?”           

            “I’m sorry, Corvo.” Anton’s voice had gone thick and liquid, his Tyvian accent surfacing as it often did under severe pressure. “It’ll have to be me. Your blood will attack hers.”

            Piero looked from one man to the other. Corvo’s face had gone still and suddenly slack. “She’s my daughter,” he said hoarsely.

            “She is,” Anton replied steadily, though his eyes still sought the floor. “So let me save her for you, old man.”

            “I can ensure the transfusion goes smoothly,” Piero put in reassuringly. “It does not have to be Anton. It is not a terribly complex procedure, and I have performed it before.” On occasion, at least. He did not understand why Corvo’s hand was flexing tightly. “It will not be a problem,” he continued. “I may not be, ah, either Royal Physician, but I am not incompetent.”

            Corvo blinked at him, once, twice, then drew a long breath like a man surfacing from underwater. “Of course, Piero, I don’t doubt it,” he replied finally.

            “We will simply need the appropriate equipment.”

            “There’s an intravenous line among the Royal Physician’s equipment,” Anton said heavily. Then he fixed Ridgemore with a frown. “At least, there _was_.”

            “I did not remove any of your equipment,” she said stiffly. “It should still be in the Royal Physician’s quarters.”

            “Then let us make haste,” Anton responded tartly. “You can stitch her wounds while Piero fills her veins. Presuming you feel competent to do so.”

            Ridgemore stared at the ground, then nodded slowly. From what he had seen of her, Piero thought it highly likely she would think herself competent to do so even if she were not, but he bowed to Anton’s decision, and the group began to move. Corvo lifted Emily as easily as if she were still the little girl that Piero had first met.

            He and Anton had never stayed much in the Royal Physician’s quarters in Dunwall Tower, too comfortable at the Kaldwin’s Bridge Laboratory. Instead, they had been mainly used for storage and the occasional overnight visit for one or both of them, and the rooms had never attained any sort of impression of their presence, but it was still a shock for Piero to see how thoroughly they had changed in the few scant months the two of them had been gone.

            The room had been entirely redecorated. Someone had finally finished putting down a full rug in place of the single strip of worn, beige carpet that Piero remembered, and the double bed had been replaced by a smaller one with a worn quilt thrown over it. Piero recognized a particularly unusual Morleyan style of patchwork, found only in the northern provinces. The one small painting—nothing but a simple stormy seascape—Anton had hung over the fireplace had not been removed, but had been turned to face the wall so that only the back was visible. Piero wondered if that had occurred before or after Delilah’s coup.

            Corvo laid Emily gently down on the bed while Anton and Piero went to check on the status of their equipment, Ridgemore trailing after them without speaking. Opening the door to the storage room revealed a disordered mess, and Anton whirled with thunder in his expression only for them both to see that Ridgemore’s eyes had widened as well. “Outsider’s Grace,” she muttered, a strange choice of profanity. Piero wondered if it was Morleyan as well. The current Royal Physician certainly had the typical broad face and light hair and eyes of a Morley native.

            “Help me look,” was all that Anton said. The three of them searched in silence, Piero automatically sorting various bits and bobs to their correct locations. In several places, glass crunched underfoot, and there were peculiar colored stains on the floor, gummy beneath Piero’s feet. When the circumstances were less urgent, they would require careful cleaning, as there were a number of reagents among Piero’s supplies that could have unfortunate effects when resolvated.

            Fortuitously, it did not take more than a few minutes to locate the intravenous line and its accompanying equipment, and, even more fortuitously, it was undamaged. Anton and Piero shared a weary look as they lifted it between them; it was not terribly heavy, but neither of them was in the peak of health, to put it mildly.

            “Let me,” Ridgemore said, glancing between the two of them, and finally taking the side Anton was maneuvering. “If you’re going to be losing blood at your age in your condition, the less exertion, the better.”

            “There is nothing wrong with my condition,” Anton said waspishly, but he stepped back and let her take the weight.

            Ridgemore’s eyebrows went up slightly. “I am aware you do not think highly of me,” she said, “and perhaps I have been lax in my perusal of some of the recent literature, but I do have a doctor’s training. From the way you are moving, I would venture to guess you’ve taken injuries to ribs on both the right and left sides. Am I right?”

            Anton grunted something unintelligible, but he stood back and allowed Piero and Ridgemore to manhandle the apparatus into the adjoining room, where it was the work of only a few moments to ready it for the procedure.

            “R-Ready?” Piero asked Ridgemore, who was bending over Emily as Piero swabbed Anton’s arm and probed at it to ensure he would be able to find an appropriate vein.

            “Ready.”

            “Can I stay?” Corvo asked, hovering in the corner.

            “As long as you do not become a distraction,” Piero told him firmly.

            “You won’t even know I’m here.”

            “Er, that is not—ah—necessary,” Piero responded hurriedly.

            A brief smile flitted across Corvo’s countenance. “Metaphorically, of course,” he clarified.

            “Hurry it up, will you,” Anton growled. “I hate needles.”

            Piero fixed him with a look. “I am working as quickly as is feasible for safety’s sake, as I think you know,” he responded. “Corvo, hand me that flask of alcohol.”

            Now that everything had been set up, it was the work of only a few moments to disinfect the areas on Emily’s and Anton’s arms and insert the intravenous line to both. Anton, despite his complaints, held perfectly still, and Emily was still unconscious: whether her swoon was from pain or weakness or simple exhaustion, Piero did not know. Beside him, Ridgemore was working quietly to remove the makeshift bandages and stitch up any wounds that required it. As soon as the line had been seated, Piero went to assist her.

            He had done the same for many patients, especially during his years on Pearl Street, but this hurt as much as any such operation he had ever performed. The injuries on Emily’s side and leg were ugly, a criss-cross of extensive lacerations that must be deeply painful, although fortunately no major blood vessels had been struck—she would almost certainly have bled to death already had that been the case.

            To Piero’s surprise, Ridgemore worked quickly and efficiently, her hands steady as she stitched and cleaned and bound the wounds up again. As they were finishing up, she looked up and caught his gaze, giving him a crooked little smile. “I really am not so ill-qualified as you seem to think,” she told him, then sighed. “Although I might as well be.”

            “I d-do n-not assume y-you are ill-qualified,” Piero replied, somewhat mendaciously. “W-We—Anton and I—it has b-been a remarkably trying experience, and Emily is—of great important to b-both of us.”

            Ridgemore looked away. “I promised Wyman I would not let any harm come to Lady Emily,” she said quietly. “I failed.”

            It was rare for Piero to receive confidences, particularly from women he did not know well; even if it had not been, it was not the sort of statement he would have known how to respond to. “Emily is—” he stalled out entirely, looking down at her, then back to where Anton sat slumped in his chair with the intravenous line still dangling from his arm. Finally, Piero raised a hand and, very gently, swept a stray curl away from Emily’s forehead. “Sh-She is badly injured but sh-should survive,” was all he could think to say.

            Hands finishing carefully dressing the last of the injuries, Ridgemore nodded. “I know how much she means to both of you,” she said. “Everyone has heard of the Royal Physician and the Royal Tutor. There are many nasty rumors, but Wyman knows the truth, and so do the people close to her and Emily.” She looked over at Anton. “I think that’s probably enough,” she said, and Piero, looking at the way the deathly pale was slowly being replaced with a healthier flush across Emily’s cheeks, and the way Anton’s head was sinking slowly forward toward his chest, was inclined to agree.

            The removal of the line was simple enough, and Piero nodded when Ridgemore asked if she could bandage Emily’s arm. She seemed to want to feel useful, and Piero was concerned about Anton. “Stop fussing,” Anton told him.

            “I am not fussing,” Piero said sternly, winding the bandage about Anton’s upper arm and then checking his pulse. “Your body has been under a severe strain after the past few months. It would not do to be careless.”

            “As has yours,” Anton muttered darkly, “and it’s not as if you listened to _me_ about it.” But he submitted to Piero’s ministrations without further complaint.

            “We had better get you some fluids to replace what you have lost,” Piero was telling him when he heard a noise from the bed and looked back to see that Emily’s eyes were fluttering, and she was starting to move. Corvo was at her side in an instant; Anton gave an audible sigh of relief and slumped in his chair, drawing his sleeve down to hide the bandage over the puncture that had been left by the intravenous line.

            “Father!”

            Corvo enveloped Emily in his arms, pressing his lips into her hair, and she gave a dry little sob into his front. Piero looked away from them awkwardly, taking Anton’s hand instead in an entirely nonprofessional way. “You are certain y-you are all right?” he asked. Anton gave him a shaky nod.

            “Delilah is gone? I didn’t just dream that?” Emily was asking urgently.

            “She is gone,” Piero confirmed. “She and—a-a-and—” He could not force his lips to say it.

            “Yes—oh, yes, of course, I remember now.” Emily gave another small sob. “Oh, Mother.”

            “It—ah—w-was h-her choice,” Piero told her. “I-I th-think she did not regret it.” The press of Anton’s hand on his steadied him.

            Emily took another breath of air, expelling it in a long, sad sigh. “Mother was the bravest woman I’ve ever known,” she said, with a nod. “I know she did the right thing. I just—miss her.” She put a hand to her head. “What happened? I feel awful.”

            “Please try not to move too much, Your Majesty.” With a last squeeze of Anton’s hand, Piero crossed the room to check her over, and found himself awkwardly competing with Ridgemore for space at the bedside. After a moment, he yielded to her murmured, “Let me take your pulse, Your Grace.”

            Emily smiled tiredly. “Oh, thank you, Amelia.”

            “You were injured during the—ah—struggle w-with Delilah,” Piero explained. “You l-lost a great deal of blood, and—”

            “—and your father had to fill your veins up again,” Anton broke in. Piero blinked, pushing his spectacles up his nose, shooting a glance over at his husband. Anton was staring fiercely at Corvo, who flinched slightly, shoulders slumping.

            “Yes—” he began. “Emily—”

            There was something here Piero did not understand. “Be kind to him,” Anton said, eyes flicking to Piero, to Ridgemore, warning them to silence. “Poor old Corvo. Not too much for you, I hope?”

            “What?” Corvo asked blankly. “But—”

            “You’re her father, aren’t you?” Anton growled. “Outsider’s balls, man! Stop stammering. She’s fine. Piero and I will leave you two alone. Emily, I expect to see you once you’ve recovered. Over the last few weeks, I’ve discovered an appalling number of gaps in your studies.”

            “Get out of here, you old slave-driver,” Emily responded cheerfully. “There are gaps in my studies because I was saving Dunwall.”

            “Terrible excuse,” Anton replied, getting up. He staggered slightly, and Piero put a concerned hand beneath his elbow. He should not have given enough blood to put him in direct danger, but he had certainly given enough to result in lightheadedness, and that coupled with the strain of the past few weeks—well, Piero did not feel very well himself. He would probably prescribe some amount of bed rest for both of them, although he himself would have to ensure he was taking exercise as well to combat the weakness he was still feeling from the extended amount of time lying down.

            Ridgemore followed them out of the room. “If you say anything,” Anton snarled at her after they had crossed the threshold.

            The blond doctor raised an eyebrow at him. “Gossip doesn’t interest me,” she told him bluntly. “Besides, I’m not in a hurry to cause trouble for Emily.”

            Anton continued to eye her suspiciously as they made their way slowly down the stairs. Ridgemore was staring straight ahead, somewhat studiedly, although she looked to the side as Piero staggered and had to stop supporting Anton and lean against the wall, so badly were his legs shaking. With a sigh, she proffered a shoulder to Anton, and he jerked his head to the side at Piero, who waved a hand in negation.

            The Royal Physician rolled her eyes. “I’ll call one of the guards to help as well,” she said. “Where exactly are you going?”

            Piero exchanged a glance with his husband. “The docks, I s-s-suppose,” he said dubiously, suddenly realizing that even that walk might turn out to be a bit much for both of them.

            Ridgemore stopped. “The _docks_?” she said incredulously.

            “We have a vessel there,” Anton growled, flexing his shoulder exhaustedly and wincing. Piero wondered when he had last applied the ointment that helped with the pain. It was the kind of thing Anton might easily have forgotten, especially in the confusion of the last few days—or deliberately not done; it could take some time and sometimes required the aid of another. Anton might have decided it was simply not worth it in the middle of all that had been happening.

            “No,” Ridgemore said.

            “What?” Anton responded.

            “No, both of you are going to a bedroom in the Tower, where I can keep an eye on you.”

            Anton started to swell up, and then bent double with a grunt of pain.

            “As I said. Ribs bruised or cracked, what looks like a recent shoulder injury—”

            “It’s not, it is an old wound that sometimes—”

            “—I don’t like the way you’re breathing, and Master Joplin appears ready to faint from exhaustion.”

            In the normal run of things, Piero might have protested, but he could not deny that she was correct, and he knew Anton was likelier to bow to Piero’s safety and comfort than his own, so he merely forced out, “It would be appreciated.”

            Anton’s mouth snapped shut; he darted a sideways glance at Piero, and then nodded. “Okay, fine,” he muttered.

            “Wait here, then. I’ll just be a minute.”

            Piero legs trembled, and he slid down the wall into a sitting position. After a moment, Anton joined him. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

            “The adrenaline is ebbing,” Piero told him. His head was beginning to swim slightly, and a dangerous feeling was percolating in the base of his spine. “I—I will n-need my t-tonic.”

            “Fuck me,” Anton swore, reaching into his pocket. “Here, I brought it with me. I can’t believe I forgot.”

            Gratefully, Piero took a long swallow, feeling the welcome numbness spreading through his limbs and brain. “I d-do not know if it will be enough,” he murmured. “I feel peculiar.”

            “I’m not surprised.” Anton took his wrist and checked his pulse, leaned forward and studied his pupils. “Hold on, if you can. If you’re going to be convulsing, a bed would a better location. Less chance of concussive injury.”

            Leaning back, Piero tried to distract himself. He sought Anton’s hand in his and held it loosely. “I think I must be very stupid,” he said sleepily, “but what was all of that fuss with Corvo? I am certain there was some unspoken there that I could not understand.”

            Sudden silence. Anton slumped beside him, putting his head into the crook between Piero’s head and shoulder. “I sired Emily,” he said bluntly, and Piero blinked.

            “What? _How_?”

            Anton rolled his eyes up towards Piero, eyebrows going up. “The usual way,” he replied crossly. Piero stared at him, a fragment of memory floating to the top of his mind.

            _Did you know if you trace your finger over the top of Anton’s ear—_

_A contemplative, conspiratorial expression on Empress Jessamine’s face, a sudden glitter in her dark eyes._

            “You bedded _the Empress_?”

            “She was lonely,” Anton shrugged. “We were friends. There was nothing romantic about it—she was head over heels for Corvo even then and had been for some time, but he was being recalcitrant about it. Jessamine needed a distraction, and her company was better than most.” Anton sighed, lines appearing about his mouth and eyes as he drew his eyebrows together. “I had her on a contraceptive draught, of course, but it didn’t work, or perhaps she forgot—I don’t know. She fell pregnant a few months after she and Corvo finally worked things out, and I’d hoped—” He fell into a morose silence.

            Piero shifted his right hand out of Anton’s to put his arm about his husband’s shoulders. “Ah,” he said, as the pattern of the past hour finally fell into place. “You did a blood test to confirm her paternity. That is how you knew you were a compatible donor, and Corvo was not.”

            Tiredly, Anton nodded. “It’s all so fucking stupid,” he said. “As if it matters whose blood she has. Corvo is her father and always has been.”

            Piero thought about this. “Parenthood does not seem to me to be mutually exclusive,” he finally hazarded. “I myself have sometimes had feelings towards Emily which one m-might term parental, as I understand it, although I am not much versed in—”

            “I would be a _terrible father_ ,” Anton said firmly.

            “You seem to me to have been a perfectly fine one.”

            “ _What_?”

            “You have always ensured her education was excellent, you have mentored her in your own specialties, as Corvo has in his, and you have protected her to the best of your abilities. As has Corvo. I agree that I do not think it much matters whose blood flows in her veins, but Emily does seem to have more than one father.”

            Anton made a soft, explosive noise, but did not seem able to disagree. “ _Don’t_ tell her,” he said finally.

            “No, I agree, you are right. People are stupid about inheritance. It might make complicated something that seems to me quite simple.”

            “No might about it,” grumbled Anton, but he relaxed against Piero.

            After a few more minutes, Ridgemore returned with several of the tired-looking guards, who helped the two of them to their feet and conducted them to one of the innumerable guest suites. Someone had started a roaring fire in the grate, and, although the sole bed had not been made, several blankets had been thrown onto the mattress. Piero, whose legs had begun to tremble again, and who could feel the fire still lurking at the back of his mind, sank down onto it and took another swallow of his tonic.

            The guards were the first to leave. Ridgemore jerked her chin from Anton to the bed, and he grunted and followed Piero, then shot a shrewd look back at her. “You think Emily should know,” he said tightly.

            “I think you should tell her, yes.” Ridgemore’s face was blank as she continued. “Everyone deserves to know the truth of their history. But it’s not my secret to tell.”

            “Corvo is her father. That is the truth of Emily’s history.” Piero opened his mouth, then shut it again. There was nothing to be gained by disagreeing with Anton further on this point. Whether or not he labeled himself as one of Emily’s fathers was, after all, rather a moot point. Overall, Piero agreed with Anton. Nothing would be gained by telling Emily, when she was already aware of how both Corvo and Anton viewed her.

            “Not according to your test,” Ridgemore said, her mouth tilting up slightly at one corner. “Or is it that you don’t trust your own work after all?”

            The mirthless smile Anton returned to her had a bite to it, almost predatory. “You’ll have to try harder than that,” he told her. “I didn’t say he sired her, but Corvo’s her father for all that.”           

            “You may want to make sure Corvo understands that, then, that’s all.” She reached for the doorknob and then paused and frowned. “I trained as a midwife, Master Sokolov. I have seen my share of…surprises. But you covered your tracks well. I’m astonished I’ve heard no gossip about it.”

            “There was a juicier piece of gossip,” Anton shrugged. “Jessamine and I were discreet; she did not bother with discretion with Corvo. It wasn’t needed.”

            “There are stories that paint you as a scheming Tyvian poisoner; others that say you are a dissolute buffoon. I’ve even heard that your legendary pursuit of the Outsider is nothing but misdirection, and you’re actually an accomplished witch. But none of those are true, are they?”

            Anton finally sank to the bed. “I’ve done my share of dissolute buffoonery,” he said, yawning and lying back. Piero looked from him to Ridgemore, who appeared to be waiting expectantly. After a moment, Anton cracked an eye open. “Well, go on, piss off, then,” he said, sounding almost gleeful. “Weren’t you the one who said we needed rest?”

            An angry huff of air escaped from Ridgemore’s mouth, but she nodded stiffly, then turned and left.

            “Th-That was rude,” Piero said.

            “Yes,” Anton agreed. “She was annoying me.”

            “She d-does seem to care about Emily.”

            “Doesn’t mean I have to like her.”

            Making a noise of assent, Piero lay beside him, putting his arms about him. The sensation was like coming home. “I did not know people rumored thought that you were a witch,” he yawned.

            “Neither did I, but it’s better than birds nesting in my beard.”

            Piero blinked at him. “What?”

            Anton gave him a slightly sad smile. “Something Jess said once.”

            Despite the exhaustion clouding his senses—or perhaps because of it—another fragmentary memory floated to the top of Piero’s mind. “I told her that we are married, I think.”

            A surprised laugh bubbled out of Anton’s mouth, followed by a soft grunt of pain. “You told Jessamine Kaldwin that I was married? How did she take that?”

            “She was—surprised. She said that I must be a remarkable man.”

            “Well.” Anton rolled to the side, cupped the back of Piero’s head with one large hand, and drew him forward into a kiss. “As you are. When I was younger, I imagined so many things about my life, but you—never. I think it’s sweeter for the surprise.”

            Piero pressed a kiss to Anton’s forehead, another to his lips. “Rest, Tosha,” he said gently.

~

            In sleep, it is all clear, as it never is in waking. Piero is back in the reeds, but the swamp beneath his feet has dried, the mud cracked. The air is thick with pollen, almost chokingly so. It seems to be drifting down from overhead, and Piero puts a hand to his face, shielding his eyes.

            “Tea?” asks the Outsider.

            He is seated at a round stone table. Steam rises from the kettle in the middle of it, set between them; Piero can see his face only through the thick wavering haze of heat drifting upwards, but it does not look quite the same. The eyes—those are the same, dark black from lid to lid, but the right side of his face is even whiter than the left and there is a strange wavering effect to it, as if it is blurring into the air round about it.

            “Thank you,” Piero says, taking a seat across from him. The cup is in his hands before he can say more, and he raises it to his lips. It is good.

            “You have seen a great deal,” says the Outsider. “More than many.”

            “And I take it you find that interesting,” sighs Piero.

            The Outsider tips his head to one side. “I find it useful.” His face bleeds into the steam as if something has taken root and is growing from it, waving fronds rooted in his high cheeks. “You have…helped me, and I find I do not know the correct response.”

            “You might try starting with ‘thank you,’ I understand that is the polite thing to say,” Piero tells him. A rippling pulse of whalesong reaches his ears and dies.

            “Piero Joplin. In all of your selves you are _fascinating_. You and Emily and Corvo—patterns that diverge so far from your source, like ripples spreading outward that only grow bigger as they go.”

            Shrugging off the chill those words send through his spine, Piero merely shrugs. “I do not dance for your amusement,” he says softly.

            “And the most fascinating thing about you is that I am not the only one who is fascinated.” The Outsider smiles, sharp and sure. Piero does not understand, and only looks at him, uncomprehending, until he gestures with a thin finger, pointing upwards. Piero lets his gaze drift upwards with the finger, with the steam, along the column of dancing pollen and upward to its source. To the vast blackthorn tree above them whose curled green buds have unfurled into a veritable sea of delicate, five-petaled white flowers.

            “Thank you, Piero Joplin, for freeing me of my bonds. For removing the cancer with its roots growing in me.” Piero looks down again as the petals begin to fall, fast and thick, like snow; such snow as he has never seen except on the single journey he took with Anton to the frigid Tyvian steppes. “I am in your debt,” the Outsider says, voice high yet resonant like the whalesong, and Piero is thrashing his way upwards through the snow towards wakefulness.

~

            The sound of a gasp and a thud dragged Anton neatly back to consciousness. He steadied himself through the momentary confusion of an unfamiliar bed and looked over with concern to where Piero had been. There was nothing but a welter of sheets leading off the bed.

            For an instant, the room seemed to shift, and he gasped for breath. It had all been a dream, then. Piero was dead and Jindosh was still playing his awful game and, in that moment, Anton wished he had killed him, dream or no—and then Piero sat up from beside the bed where he had fallen, his thin hair tousled, one hand grasping backwards to pull himself upright, and Anton breathed again.

            “Don’t scare a man like that,” he snapped, reaching out to help haul his husband back into bed.

            “I d-did,” Piero gasped out, and then his mouth snapped closed. For an instant, Anton thought it was the start of another fit, and then Piero managed to totter upright and push himself awkwardly into Anton’s arms. He was trembling badly, teeth chattering, but it was not a convulsion: he was bathed in a cold, chilly, fearful sweat. “I d-d-did n-n-n-not int-t-tend t-t-to.”

            “Nightmare?” Anton asked as the shivering started to abate.

            “I d-d-dreamed,” Piero seemed to be nodding, but it might still be just the tremors in his limbs. “The Outsider s-s-said that he owed m-m-me a d-d-debt. And th-th-that he was n-not the only one f-f-fascinated by m-m-me. Th-Th-There was a t-t-tree.”

            That was more information than Piero usually brought back from such dreams. “Well, and so he does owe you a debt,” Anton said, wrapping his arms around Piero’s chest to warm him. “But what did he mean—he was not the only one?” He frowned. “What kind of tree?”

            “I th-think I h-have been seeing it for some time, but it is h-hard to know.” Piero’s hands described swooping boughs in the air. “A b-b-blackthorn tree. Like the one in the p-p-painting of Delilah and J-J-Jessamine. B-B-But this t-t-time it was in b-b-blossom, c-c-covered in white f-flowers that l-l-looked like s-s-snow.”

            Anton felt a sudden cold chill run down his spine. “A blackthorn tree?” he said slowly. “Are you certain?”

            Nuzzling into his neck, Piero nodded shakily against him. “As c-c-certain as I c-can be. M-My m-memories—n-not the m-most reliable.”

            “A blackthorn tree with white blossoms is the symbol of the Lady in White,” Anton said bluntly, and he managed it with a steady voice, although the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck were standing up. He felt Piero’s flinch against him, felt the full body shudder that traveled through him.

            “Shhh, love.”

            “B-B-But—r-r-really? An-n-nother one?” Piero’s voice was shaking too hard for the attempt at flippancy to really work.

            “Hey.” Anton stroked his back. “Hey, it’s okay.”

            “ _Why_?” Piero cried helplessly, and now his vocalizations were something close to distressed laughter.

            “Because you’re brilliant,” Anton told him. “And because clearly the gods enjoy spiting me. We’ll figure this out.”

            Piero’s hands caught in his hair, and his husband curled closer to him. “Just promise you will not leave me.”

            “I didn’t do the leaving last time.”

            “Please.”

            Anton sighed, then took Piero’s hand and brought it to his lips. “By the Lady, I swear that I will not leave you, my love.”

            The trembling of Piero’s limbs seemed to abate slowly. “I s-suppose she cannot be worse than the Outsider,” he said speculatively, and began to say something else but was halted when Anton let out a sudden, surprised bark of laughter.

            “What happened to Jessamine’s heart?” he asked. “The vessel you contained Delilah’s soul in?”

            He felt Piero shrug. “It is gone, at any rate, I am fairly sure.”

            “Then the Lady really did take the mad painter’s heart.” Anton shook his head. “I wonder if she’s a taste for them. Well, she’s welcome to Delilah’s.” He sighed, and squeezed Piero tightly. “You’re safe,” he said.

            “You as well.” Piero took a long, shuddering breath, and Anton kissed the side of his throat.

            “This is real,” he murmured. “You are here. You are safe.”

            “Look.” Piero gestured to the window. No one had thought to draw the curtains the previous night, and watery dawn light was already filtering in. “The sun is rising.”

            Anton smiled, a weary, slow smile. “It hasn’t burnt out yet, and till it does, it will always rise, gods and stories be damned.”

            “The s-s-sun will always r-rise, a-and—” Piero swallowed, and got a look on his face that Anton suspected meant he was about to say something unbearably sentimental.   He was not disappointed. “I w-will always l-love y-you,” Piero blurted.

            “And I you, Petja.” Anton kissed him. “You are safe,” he murmured again, and Piero leaned against him. Together they watched the sun rise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All that's remaining is the epilogue, which I'll try to post in the next few days. :)


	13. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wyman comes home.

            The aftermath of Delilah’s coup dragged on for weeks. The Regenter group resurfaced and not all of them were dispelled even by the magnanimous apology Emily received from Duke Luca Abele, in which he proclaimed that he had been most grievously deceived in Delilah. The Lord Protector led the Watch against the remnants, and once they had surrendered, Emily pardoned them, though not before a few hours’ shut in her room by herself.

            Wyman’s return was delayed. Anton Sokolov refused to be reinstated as the Royal Physician, although he and Piero Joplin returned to their old quarters at Kaldwin’s Bridge. Three days after their return, Anton developed pneumonia. For a week, Emily barely slept, waking each morning steeling herself to hear the worst from Amelia Ridgemore, who was sharing the primary care in shifts with Piero and several other notable doctors. Amelia confided in her at the beginning that she was not hopeful; Anton had a history of lung problems, according to Piero, he was old enough to be at high risk, and the torture he had undergone from Kirin Jindosh had not put him in a healthy state to begin with.

            Emily cried in her bed at night when no one but her father could see. Corvo held her and murmured that it would be all right in a way she wished that he had been able to do when she was ten years old and had lost her mother. Emily confessed to him that she could have killed Kirin Jindosh, that she had a burning desire to send an assassin after him even now.

            “I’m glad you didn’t kill him,” Corvo told her. “I never wanted that for you, Emily.”

            “Anton stopped me,” she confessed. “I thought he’d killed Piero, and I—I just didn’t feel anything, but I thought he deserved to die.” She lay back against her pillows, exhausted. “And now he’s killed Anton, and I still think he deserves to die.”

            Corvo was quiet at that, and he sat by her and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

            Amelia Ridgemore was standing at her bedside the next morning; Corvo was nowhere to be seen. Emily barely managed to form the words, “Is Anton—” and did not know how to react when Amelia actually smiled.

            “His fever broke last night, his breathing is much improved, and he has all his nurses scurrying around this morning, fetching him an enormous amount of fried meat, except for Piero, who nearly threw something at his head. In short, his prognosis is excellent.”

            “Thank the Outsider,” Emily gasped, and then she burst into tears.

            Anton’s miraculous recovery seemed to herald a similar revival for Dunwall. Emily’s day-to-day life moved away from handling one crisis after another and into a slow supervision of rebuilding. Delilah’s paintings had to be taken down and stored while the Abbey and Anton argued over what should be done with them. Anton had taken to requiring anyone whom he disliked to have meetings with him in his bedroom, a practice which was becoming more and more transparently disingenuous as he pottered around Kaldwin’s Bridge in increasingly spry ways. Emily put her foot down the day Amelia reported finding him in the rafters of his greenhouse with Piero working below and sending materials up to him via basket.

            This apparently did not much help the Abbey’s cause, but Emily felt that if they had no one capable of handling Anton that was their own lookout. She had plenty of other things to attend to: a number of noble families had to be soothed and reassured that she had always taken the Crown-killer murders seriously, that she, herself, had been responsible for the removal of the Crown-killer, and that the killer themselves had been executed—which wasn’t really a lie; Hypatia might yet breathe, but Grim Alex would never return.

            Then there was her father. Corvo had been quiet since his revival from stone; although he was always there for her when she needed him, he had begun fading into the background more than ever, rarely offering an opinion or even a greeting unless Emily spoke first, and finally, one afternoon when she had a little extra time to herself, she taxed him with it.

            “Dad,” she said, deliberately choosing the most informal address she could, and at his startled, quizzical look, gestured to him. “Walk with me.”

            She took him outside, then, quite deliberately, she _reached_ her way onto the roof, knowing that he would be able to keep up with her. “Are you ever going to tell me what’s wrong?” she asked him, when he gave climbed over the edge and shot her an impatient look. “And don’t tell me that nothing is. I’m your daughter. I can tell.”

            Somehow, she’d said the wrong thing. Corvo’s eyes became hooded, his mouth pursed, and he looked away, toward the grey ocean.

            “Have I—” she swallowed, “—have I let you down? Is it because I couldn’t save Mother?”

            He turned back quickly, face so full of anguish that Emily almost took a step back. “Emily—no. Never. I’m sorry that I’ve let you see my—” A huff of breath replaced whatever word he would have chosen.

            “It’s to do with me, whatever it is. I can tell.”

            “Yes—no. Not exactly.” Corvo took a deep breath and let it out. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”

            She frowned and shook her head. “Father—”

            Corvo gave her a crooked smile. “What if I weren’t?” came out all in a rush.

            The furrow in Emily’s forehead grew deeper. “You are, though,” she said, plaintively. “You’re my _dad_.”

            Passing his hand in front of his mouth, the Royal Protector seemed to be searching for words. “But if I—”

            Emily sighed. “Have you really been bothering about that old gossip?” she asked.

            Corvo blinked at her. “What?”

            “Well, of course the going theory is that you and Mother were lovers since she was about eighteen,” Emily responded carelessly. “But some people say that isn’t true. Since I was young, there have been one or two guards who claimed that you and Mother only began a romance because she fell pregnant with me and the father refused to support her. Usually I just let them talk, unless they call Mother a whore, and then I throw rocks at them from somewhere hidden until they stop.”

            Her father shifted his weight imperceptibly backwards. It almost seemed as if he were about to start running away. One fist clenched with anger, but most of what Emily saw in his face was simple confusion. “ _If_ that were true,” he said softly, and Emily could hear the weight behind the hypothetical and wondered how he could have not heard that gossip, wondered how this fear hadn’t been laid to rest years ago, “then I would not really be your father.”

            “Don’t be stupid, of course you’re my dad.”

            Something about the way she said it must have amused Corvo, because his lips twitched. “Oh?”

            “I mean I’ll have to have an heir myself sometime, I suppose,” Emily said, trying to sound careless. “Wyman can’t sire it, obviously, but she’ll be—well, I suppose we’ll both be the mother, technically, but the point is we’ve talked about it and the important thing is to be there for the child. To raise it. You’ve been my dad since before I can remember, and that’s never going to change. So stop being stupid because it’s rather distracting.”

            The exasperated look Corvo shot her was reassuring; he said only, “fine,” and briefly ran a hand over the top of her head. She wasn’t certain if she’d completed convinced him, but at least it should be some time before this particular bugbear came up again.

            “Good,” she told him and gave him a fierce hug.

            The day after her chat with her father, Wyman finally made it back. Her ship had been delayed by storms, and she herself had been repeatedly delayed prior to that by “ugh, politics,” according to her. Emily received the news that her ship had docked a scant five minutes before Wyman herself strode into the throne room, and then Emily was barely able to stop herself from throwing herself into Wyman’s arms. She did that about half an hour later once they had finally secured a little privacy. Nothing beyond a long embrace, because Corvo was still in the room, but even that much was unbearably long-needed.

            “I’m sorry,” Wyman said quietly into her hair. “When you were missing, with Dunwall spiraling downwards, I didn’t know what to do, and then when you returned, everything became complicated and required some diplomatic finesse. Which, as you know, I am terrible at.”

            “Nonsense,” Emily told her, basking in the sensation of the wiry arms about her. “You are extremely good at it. You just hate it.”

            “Close enough.” Wyman dropped a kiss to the top of her head.

            “Come, we must visit Amelia. She’ll want to see you.” Emily tugged on Wyman’s hand. “She’s probably in her office.”

            Amelia was not in her office. Anton and Piero were; Anton was sitting on the desk, Piero approximately in his lap, and they were kissing with enough passion to give the lie to all the sniggering jests Emily had ever heard about age and its effects on the physical aspects of love.

            “Whoops,” Emily said. Corvo cleared his throat loudly.

            Piero blushed red from ear to ear and covered his face with his hands; Anton made a gently obscene gesture in their direction, and then put his arms around Piero’s waist to stop him from escaping.

            “How dare you,” Emily said calmly. “Just because we walked in and found you _defiling_ Amelia’s desk—”

            “It’s my desk,” Anton retorted. “Mistress Ridgemore is borrowing it. On sufferance.”

            “Perhaps we had better tell her at this point to have it chopped up for kindling,” Corvo put in mildly, and Wyman chuckled.

            “Um,” said Piero.

            “ _At any rate_ ,” Emily said. “Wyman, you remember Master Sokolov and Master Joplin?”

            “We have met, yes. I think I’ll skip the handshake, if it’s all the same to you,” Wyman smirked.

            “I apologize,” Piero said stiffly. “F-For myself and my h-husband.”

            Wyman waved it off. “I’ve seen worse, and from what I hear you two deserve a medal, much less a few moments of peace.”

            “I don’t apologize at all,” Anton said cheerfully. “I retract your apology.”

            Piero sputtered. “You can’t _do_ that!”

            As they began to bicker, Emily grinned and reached out to each side, grabbing Wyman with her left hand and Corvo with her right, pulling them both close to her. Wyman squeezed her hand; Corvo leaned against her. Piero smacked Anton’s hand lightly but did not pull away from him again.

            Emily shut her eyes, her smile growing wider. She was surrounded by family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, writing this was a blast :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Addendum to Dangerously Irrelevant Variables](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11589981) by [BookishScout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookishScout/pseuds/BookishScout)




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